Down With the Sickness
by DiabloVixen
Summary: Something has hit Lima, maybe Ohio and maybe the entire country. A disease that turns people into flesh eating walking corpses. Santana Lopez is forced to break her rules of survival for a group of misfit survivors and one blue-eyed survivor in particular. Eventual Brittana. Rated M for Language, Violence, Adult Themes. Santana's POV
1. Prologue

**/*Author's Note: So I'm a little obsessed with Zombies. I don't really know why but I got this idea for zombie fic so I decided to go with it. Its gonna have some adventure/scary moments but a bit of romance too of course. cough Brittana cough. Like there'd be anything else. Anyway Here's the prologue let me know what you think. (Oh and Santana's POV. Rated T since she has a mouth like a truck driver.)*/**

**Prologue**

They told us to stay home. That would keep us safe. They told us to bolt our doors and lock our windows. That would be enough. They told us. They told us. I got sick of listening. I was getting the fuck out of Lima, Ohio and getting the fuck out of dodge. I didn't have a destination. The coast maybe or an island. If the whole continent was going to hell I wasn't going to sit in the Goddamn middle.

It had already been week since it all started. It wasn't that much of a worry at first. A small outbreak here and there. They knew very little but they repeated that little bit over and over again. It was spread through the saliva of the carrier. Through a bite. At first the reporters said it was rabies.

Rabies! Fucking morons.

By the next day it was all over. You'd see a man running down the street, a drooling, growling body limping behind him. First it was one, than it was two then dozens. If you stayed inside you were safe but if you made a peep you were dead. A crying baby, a television or even a harsh fucking whisper could attract one. If you attracted one then more were to follow. They were like fucking ants. Flesh-eating, rotten, human ants.

My dad worked at Lima Memorial. The biggest hospital in the city. He called me the first day of the outbreak to tell me he was safe and to listen to what news told me. That was the last I even heard from him. My mom was in hysterics. I had to shove a towel in her mouth when she sobbed over my father. We couldn't make a sound. Those things were attracted to sound. She knew better. On the fourth day my mom took the family SUV and headed to the hospital to find my father. She told me to stay home. She saidto listen to what my father told me. He told me. She told me. Fuck what they told me.

It had been a week total, locked up in the house. Water stopped running and I was out of supplies. My mother wasn't coming back. I doubt she even made it all the way to the hospital. I couldn't stay here and wait to die from one of those things or from dehydration. I wasn't going to live by playing damsel in distress. The only one who could save me was myself.

My father still had his pride and joy. His sapphire blue 2011 Mustang Convertible. It was one of those cars that only came out on the brightest of days. The thing only saw sun or the inside of our family garage. My dad loved that thing more than me. Well that wasn't saying much. He loved Sunday comics more than he loved me. But he really loved that stupid fucking car. It didn't matter though. The keys were right here and he was dead, I knew he was dead. He wouldn't miss it.

_I was going to get the hell out of here and I was going to do it in style. _

I waited for a group of them to limp past the front yard. I don't know why they walked together like that. Moaning and groaning, pieces of flesh hanging off and flapping with each uneven steep but they walked together like a fucking marching band. It was disgusting and terrifying. After they got far enough down the street, I made my escape.

I pushed the garage open and saw the beauty. The glossy paint still managed to glisten in the little sunlight that pushed through the dark clouds. This thing was beautiful. I would love it more than me, too.

I revved the engine. Who cared about noise now? I was abouts to be long gone. I took off down the road. Ignoring any body limping or walking alongside in or near the road. I wasn't here to be a hero and I didn't have the time to play dead or alive guessing game. I had somewhere to be and that was anywhere but fucking here.

I pulled onto the side road. I kept my speed to a slow 60 mph. There were debris and bodies on the road I wanted to dodge and 60 mph was slow for a car like this. Driving this thing at anything slower than 100 was a crime. Especially when there wasn't anyone to stop you.

The debris got less and my foot got a little heavy. The pin rattled to 80 and kept climbing. I saw the sign for the interstate and tried to make the turn without slowing down. The car lifted onto two wheels and flipped across the road. Something flashed across my eyes and there was a smashing sound and the sound of shattering glass.

_You idiot. You fucking idiot._

Everything went black.


	2. Those Eyes

**Those Eyes**

There was a light. It flicked to my left. Then darkness again. It was back but it was on my right. My brain was pulsating. The light made it worse. I was on solid ground at least. Or semi-solid, it felt soggy.

"Ma'am."

I heard the voice but I couldn't respond. I was sure if I tried to do anything I was going to pass out again. I felt groggy. Ten-shots-of-tequila-wake-up-in-the-bed-of-the-ugliest-guy-you've-even-seen groggy.

"Ma'am" They voice was clearer but it sounded like he was talking over the sound of TV static.

"Are you okay?" Something was squeezing my hand. It had to be the something that was talking to me.

I opened my eyes slowly. I was met with beautiful piercing blue eyes. I thought my dad's Mustang was gorgeous. But these eyes. That car couldn't hold a candle to these eyes. They were blue. That was sure. If I had to pick a color than they were blue but they were shades. They reflected whatever color they were looking at; Even now I can see slivers of my brown eyes in them.

I swallowed and looked around. I was lying in the grass next to the smashed Mustang. It was smoking and parks of the engine were sizzling. I rubbed my neck with my hand to work out the kink that formed there when I moved it.

"You're lucky nothing came along." He stood up. I noticed the dark shirt and more importantly, the police badge over his heart. "And that you didn't break your neck."

This guy was insane or idiotic. I couldn't decide which one. Maybe a little bit of both. Who would stop to pull a girl out of a car? He should have gotten the hell out of dodge. Just like I was doing.

"Come on we need to get out of here." He looked over his shoulder and all of sudden his demeanor changed. He tried to lift me forcibly by my elbows. My body was still too sore and groggy. I stood for only a second before I fell back to my knees.

"We have to go now!" He shouted.

I looked over his shoulder and saw a least a dozen corpses less then fifty yards away. They were limping and slow but their menacing yellow eyes were locked right on us. Adrenaline kicked in. I was wobbly but standing on his next lift.

He dragged me to the side of what had to be his cruiser. He shoved me into the back seat. I looked out the back window. They were closing in. One or two of the things weren't very intimidating, you could easily out run one or two, but in a group like this they were absolutely terrifying.

"Oh No." I heard him whisper.

I turned my head to the front of the car. The police officer was staring at a new horde of those things. They were a bit further away but the horde was a least five bodies thick and sprawled the entire width of the street.

"They must have heard the accident." He said.

We were surrounded. Each side of the street was blocked. There was silence and I knew what he was deciding. There were only really two options. We could ditch the car and head off on foot into the neighborhood on our left. Hope that we could run far and fast enough and not run into more of them. Or we could...

He gunned the engine and aimed that car straight for the middle of the pack. I closed my eyes and braced my arms against the back of the seat. There was a slam; the car jerked and there was the sound of crushing bones and ripping flesh. But something was missing. It was the scream. There were no screams. People scream when you drive a car through them at forty miles per hour. But these weren't people.

The car jerked back and halted.

"No." The Officer said.

My eyes shot open. We had made it through the first couple rows of bodies but the car was stuck. He shifted the gear into reverse and slammed on the gas. Something was burning and smoke filled the air around us. The car jerked back but didn't move. He shifted into drive and did the same thing. Same result. We were stuck.

Something slammed against the window. I jumped across the car. Something slammed against the other side. The bodies were pounding against the car with mangled fists.

"The back windows are reinforced." He reassured. He was shouting over the muffled moans and groans coming from the bodies surrounding the car.

I wasn't reassured.

He kept shifting the car and trying to break the car loose of whatever we were stuck on.

Then the driver's side window shattered. The moans filled and bounced around the car sending shivers up my spine. The smell was the worst part. I hadn't noticed it before. I've never smelled anything like that. If death had a smell, this was it.

It took every bit of strength in me to keep my stomach contents down. Not that I had much in me since my supplies back home had been so low. I watched helplessly from behind the cage as he pushed the hungry mouths and rotting faces from the inside of the car and shifted the car with his other hand. The car jerked back and forth but it was still stuck. The car was still surrounded, the corpses pushed at it to get to car and the pack got tighter and tighter.

I did the only thing I could think to do in that situation. I closed my eyes and I prayed to whatever bastard deity let this bullshit happen in the first place.

There was another crunching of bones but this time a scream followed it. Another crunching and only a grunt this time. A third. A fourth. The walking corpses seemed to get more frantic. I could hear it in their moans. I could feel it in the way they slammed and pushed against the driver's side sending the car bouncing. Suddenly the tires found traction and jolted us forward. We pushed through the remaining zombies. I bounced around the back of the car like we were off-roading.

We were free from the mob and soon we were making our way onto the busiest street in town. Well, what used to be the busiest street in town. The moans silenced but the smell never left. We drove for only a few minutes but we were driving at top speed putting as much distance between the terrifying horde and us as we could. The town seemed clear and we pulled up into a desolate gas station.

He hobbled around the car and opened the back door for me. That's when I noticed his arm. It was barely there. The flesh had been bitten and torn to the very bone. Any skin that was left was changing to a dark shade of brown. It was already rotting.

_Oh God._

I looked up at him. Those beautiful blue eyes were gone. He didn't even look like the same person anymore. His eyes had become bloodshot and gray. Like the bites had literally drained him of his soul. He was sweating and breathing heavy. I didn't have to touch him to know that he had a fever. He tried to smile at me but without those eyes it had a lot less charm than it would have.

He pulled his gun from his holster and held it out for me. I hesitated. I knew what the news said about bites like that. I knew what was going to happen. I knew what it meant. It was an offer. Taking this gun was a promise. An unspoken but mutually understood promise.

I took the gun.

He unpinned his police shield. It took him several times and his hand slipped getting blood on it. He held that out to me too. I took this faster.

"My wife-" He took a heavy breath. "and daughters are out there still. If you find them. Tell them-" He took another breath and leaned against the car. "I love them and I tried-." He fell down against the side of the car. He leaned his head back. A lone tear fell down his cheek. His face hardened and turned to me.

"Pop the trunk. There's a shotgun back there, some shells and my backpack with minor supplies. They are attracted to sound. After you…" He swallowed his words. "Take the guns and head towards the mall. They closed it down before it got bad. It will be the safest place with the most supplies. Walk, don't run. Save your energy." He spoke fast now and labored less. The thoughts of his family gave him new strength.

I barely knew this man but I knew he had been a great cop and he'd been a great man. But great people weren't built for a world like this. People like me thrived in a world like this. The selfish. The good people stopped to help those that were hurt. The good people put themselves in danger. The good people cared. And caring gets you killed. Watching this great man slowly die and change to one of those things. This was further proof of what I needed to do to survive.

If this man was half as good of a father as he was a man then he raised good daughters and was married to a good wife. If they weren't dead already they'd be dead soon. They would do the same stupid thing that he had done. They would help a poor stupid girl inside a crashed car and they would find themselves dead. I nodded along with him anyway. I promised to find them and take care of them even if I didn't believe an ounce of it.

"Do it before-." He glanced at the gun in my hand then followed my arm up to me. I locked onto those dead blue eyes.

"I want to die a man." He said.

I looked at the gravel at my feet but I nodded in acknowledgement. I had to choke back the lump in my throat. Santana Lopez didn't cry. And this was not the time to start. I took a step back and held the gun out and aimed it at his head. He locked his eyes onto mine until the very last second. I squeezed the trigger slowly, slowly and then the gunshot bounced around my ears and echoed around the entire town. It was the loudest gunshot I have ever hear and I knew this was a stupid wish but I wish I'd never have to hear another because I would always think of this moment and this man.

I did as he said. It left me no time to mourn or thank him. I shoved the thoughts to the back of my mind and focused on the now. The sound would definitely attract something and I needed to get out of here before the something came. I did as he said. I grabbed the backpack and threw the extra ammo inside it. I swung it around my shoulders and stuck his handgun in the waistband of my jeans. I grabbed the shotgun with both hands and headed east into the woods and towards the mall.


	3. Mohawk

I ran.

My mind knew I didn't need too but it was the only reaction that seemed to make sense. I needed to put enough distance between that man, those eyes and that smell of rotting flesh.

Nothing was chasing me. The woods were eerily silent. It felt weird to be anywhere in Lima, Ohio and not hear the familiar sound of tires on gravel or the whisper of distant voices. But this wasn't the Lima I was used to and there wasn't anyone around to whisper to me. I was alone and I just shot the one person that was probably left in this stupid fucking town.

I stopped to catch my breath. I didn't realize how far and how fast I had been running. I bent over and placed my hands on my knees and wheezed in a few deep breaths. I had stopped on the edge of the woods. I could see a road in front of me. There were two abandoned cars right off the path. A large black SUV was smashed up into a crumpled sedan. The door of the sedan was pulled open. It looked like it had been ripped off its hinges. The car was charred and black in spots. The accident must have happened a while ago because the fire looked long gone. I took a few steps closer to the charred vehicle. There was something inside.

No not something. Somebody. There was a body, black from the fire. I could barely make out that it was a human being. The skin was dark and hanging off in spots and the legs… It looked like the legs and the left arm had been ripped off. Not ripped off. Gnawed off.

_Oh God. _

I was pretty sure it was the worst thing I had ever seen. I leaned in closer a sick curiosity inside me made me want to absorb all of the awful I was seeing. I couldn't bring myself to stop.

The body jumped to life and reached for me with its last remaining boney hand. I jumped back and away from the outstretched fingers. The sound that escaped its mouth wasn't a growl it was more of a prolonged gasp like something was lodged in its throat and it was choking. It tumbled to the gravel at my feet and tried to crawl towards me. I watched as its hand tried to grip the gravel and pull itself along. It was reaching for my ankles but I stepped back more and out of its reach. It was easily the most disgusting thing I had ever seen.

But I couldn't take my eyes away.

"You could throw a lease on it and name it if you want."

I jumped at the sound of a human voice. It was so rare, so unexpected, but almost welcomed.

I looked up to see a stocky guy standing near the back of the SUV. He was watching the thing at my feet and then running his eyes up and down my body. I took another step back from the charred corpse. It was making progress along the ground, not much but it was making progress. I looked back up at the guy. He had a ridiculous looking Mohawk. I wondered if he had it before or after everything happened. Maybe he thought this whole apocalypse thing gave him an excuse to look like a schmuck. He rested a baseball bat against his right shoulder. It was covered in red and brown stains. I didn't have to think twice about what he had been using it for.

His eyes stopped on the shotgun in my hands. Suddenly his face changed and he stepped forward.

"Let me take care of that for you." He took another step forward. I smacked the butt of my gun into the skull of the pathetic creature at my feet. There was a sickening crushing sound and the corpse stopped moving instantly.

"I got it." I said. It took some forced to lift the butt of the gun out of the now unanimated corpse's skull.

I looked back at the guy and he had this wide smile on his face. Like what I had done was the hottest thing in the world. And, to him, it probably was.

"What's your name, hun?" He said.

I rolled my eyes and turned away from him. Walking up the opposite direction of the road. I wasn't sure what time it was but the sun was already far down in the sky. I wouldn't make it to the mall before the sunset and frankly the thought of being out here at night terrified me. I didn't have time to make small talk with douchebags with Mohawks and I certainly didn't answer to 'hun.'

"Wait wait." His voice seemed to soften from that stupid seductive voice he had been trying to use. He grabbed my shoulder lightly, just enough to make me want to stop but not enough to force me to stop.

"I'm Puck." He held his hand out to me to shake it. I looked up in his eyes and studied his hand for a second. Maybe he wasn't a douchebag after all. That turned me off even more. I pulled from him and turned back up the road.

"Oh come on. You're the first person I've seen in forever." He droned on. He practically had to jog to keep up with me. "And you have a gun. You can't just leave me hanging."

I stopped and shoved the shotgun into his chest. "Here."

He held it for a second and studied me as if waiting for me to take me back. When I didn't he just smiled at me.

"The fuckers heavy anyway." I shrugged.

I turned back down the road. He still followed me. I walked for a while and listened to him talk. I never responded or even pretending to be interested in the stupid crap he talked about. Like I gave a shit about his fucking story. But he never took the hint so I finally I sighed and stopped.

"I gave you the gun to make you go the fuck away." I said. He frowned

"Why?" He said.

"Because I don't fucking need another person around." I said.

"Oh come on. We can watch each other's backs and-" He raised his eyebrows and changed the tone of his voice and looked up and down my legs. "-if the world needs some repopulating…" He trailed off and raised his eyebrows.

I scoffed and turned back up the road. Like that even had a chance of working.

I took a few more steps before I froze. The street was filled with cars packed bumper to bumper for as long as my eyes could see but there was something else that was more terrifying than the cars. There was a huge horde of corpses slowly marching towards us. They weren't growling or frantic so they obviously hadn't seen us but if we didn't get off this Goddamn street…

"This way." Puck whispered. He grabbed my wrist and pulled me towards the backyard of a house.

We quietly hopped a couple of fences as we moved behind the corpses. I could hear their volume of feet shuffling across the pavement.

We hopped one fence that was a little too high and I landed with a _hmf _on my knees. It stung a little and I rubbed my legs for a second. I heard a growling sound and looked up to see nothing but teeth falling towards me. I held the face of the body away from me. The corpse snapped and growled at me. I tried to turn my face away from the rotting smell. He wasn't strong or powerful. It was just dead weight on top of me and I couldn't lift it off no matter how hard I tried. I closed my eyes and willed myself to breathe through my mouth so I didn't vomit.

I felt the body pulled up off me. I looked up to see Puck slamming the butt of the shotgun into the corpses head over and over again until it stopped moving. I watched in shock and instantly felt like an idiot. I should have checked before I jumped down. I had made such a stupid mistake. Fucking Puck and his fucking pathetic need to follow me.

We hopped a few more fences. It was getting dark and it was taking so much longer to progress because we were trying to be quiet and hop fences at the same time. It was too dark to see anymore so Puck pulled me into a house.

We checked the bottom floor to make sure nothing had taken residence there. I was raiding the kitchen. I didn't realize how hungry I was. I grabbed a granola bar from the cupboard. And stuffed it in my mouth.

"They're still out there." He whispered when he found me. He stood there for a second like waiting for me to grant him an invitation like it was my fucking house or something. When I didn't say anything he reached in the box and grabbed himself a bar too.

"We should probably just check the rest of the house to make sure nothings here and stay the night." He said.

I nodded. I didn't like him telling me what to do but it was a good idea. We had nowhere else to go and I didn't want to travel in the dark. We walked slowly up the stairs. I was right behind him. He took the left side of the house and I took the right. I cleared the bathroom. It was pitch black in there but I assumed that something would have tried to eat my face as soon as I opened the door so I just closed the door and moved on. I walked into a bedroom. Even in the dark she could see that the walls were a disgusting shade of yellow.

_God who the fuck lived here. _

I checked the rest of the room and nothing was in there. I stepped out to see where Puck was. I slowly walked down the hallway and saw Puck standing inside another bedroom. His head was lowered. I made my way around the door and almost gasped at the sight.

There were a couple of orange pill bottles strewn on the night stand some were laying on their sides but every single one was empty. On the bed were the bodies. If I didn't know any better and if I hadn't already seen so much death. I would have assumed they were just sleeping. They looked so at peace.

But then again anywhere else was probably more peaceful then this shithole. Whatever crap they believed in and whatever place they thought they were going to. I could just tell by the looks on their faces that they knew they were going somewhere better than this.

"Two dudes." Puck muttered. I turned to him and saw sadness in his eyes. It would make me question him later. Question whether he was cut out for this world and whether or not he was worth my time but right now I couldn't pull myself away from the sadness I felt too. I tried to push it out because it was stupid and I didn't know these people.

"What?" I asked. I tried to strengthen my voice and looked away from Puck and back at the bed.

"Do you think they were like a couple?" He said.

I took in the bodies on the bed again and just realized that it was two men. They were holding hands and a piece of paper was folded and placed carefully underneath.

I leaned over to look at the paper. I read the name on the front. It wasn't addressed to me. Of course it wasn't but I was sure whomever it was addressed was long dead by now anyway.

I picked up the note to read it but then decided against it. I don't know why but it felt so wrong to read whatever it said. Even if the girl whose name was on the paper was long dead and eaten it wasn't my fucking business to read whatever depressing as shit words they wrote in their final moments.

Suddenly I felt an anger grow inside me.

"Fucking cowards." I whispered before I stomped out. I felt Puck's feet behind me. He grabbed my arm as I reached for the front door.

"What are you doing?" He begged.

"I'm not staying in a house with bodies." I damn near shouted.

He shushed me. "We have to stay here. It's too dark to travel. We can sleep down here. In the living room." He pointed to the room behind us.

I waited with my hand still on the door for a second. I contemplated my options. There really weren't any. Go out there and die or stay here for one night with those rotting cowards upstairs. I sighed.

"Fine." I whispered.

Puck smiled sadly at me before pulling me by the wrist into the living room. He placed me on the couch and disappeared for a while. He came back with the atrocious comforter from the tacky yellow room from upstairs and laid it out on the floor. He dropped two pillows on the floor.

I watched him do all this and cursed him for being so nice. I didn't want him to be nice. I didn't want him to do things for me like save me or make me a bed when he'd be dead any day now. I didn't want to like him before I'd have to shoot him in the head after he was bitten.

He dropped an open can in my hand. It was chicken soup. Except it was cold but I was starving and I didn't care. We ate in silence before I curled up into the bed. Puck curled up on the other side and faced away from me.

I thought of the men upstairs and their hands interlocked and twisted together as rigor mortis set into their limbs. I thought about what they felt in their final moments knowing when, where and how it was all going to end. I wondered if they wrote the note together. Maybe each of them wrote a different piece or maybe one dictated it while the other wrote it down. I wondered if my parents did something like that or if they were out there somewhere. I could still hear the shuffle of feet of the walking corpses in the street. I wondered if one of those corpses could be one of them.

It wasn't even cold but I was shivering. Why the fuck was I shivering? I hugged my body closer and I felt a warm tear fall down my face.

_No. No. No._

"Are you okay?" I heard Puck whisper to me. I turned my back to him before he could see me. "Are you cold?"

I felt him wrap his arms around my waist and he spooned into my side.

What the fuck?

I pulled his hand off me. "I'm not cuddlefucking you. Get the fuck off me!"

He pulled away like I had shocked him.

"You don't have to be such a bitch all the time you know." He whispered. "And lower your voice before something hears us." He shifted to the other side of the makeshift bed and put as much distance as he could between our bodies.

It wasn't until I felt his breathing even out that I thought about the note on the bed again. I wondered if this Rachel person knew that people she loved were dead or if she was out there searching for them. Then I remembered that she was probably dead too. Just like everyone else.


	4. Catatonic Girl

"Dads!"

The female voice dug right into my eardrums. I bolted straight up and shared a glance with Puck.

_What the fuck?_

The front door slammed against the wall as its was thrown open. A short brunette ran into the house and stomped up the stairs, still screaming.

"Dads, I'm home!"

A tall lanky guy followed through the door behind her. He reached for her arm but she was too fast for him, he missed her completely and stumbled forward a couple of steps. His eyes fell on mine and he froze.

"Rachel?" He said. He took in the scene in the living room. The comforter laid out on the floor and Puck and I now slowly rising to our feet. My brain was still trying to process what the fuck was going on.

There was a scream from upstairs. We all turned towards the sound. Puck and I exchanged a knowing glance.

"I guess she found her dads." I muttered. Puck elbowed me before I said anything else.

"Rachel?" The tall dorky kid bolted up the stairs frantically falling on the first couple of steps.

Puck and I listened to each footstep and waited for the reaction we knew was coming.

"Oh God." I heard echo through the walls of the house. Then the crying intensified.

After losing all desire to listen to this girl's muffled cries I checked the front yard to make sure her outburst hadn't attracted anything. The neighborhood looked peaceful now. Like there hadn't been an army of walking corpses here just last night.

That's when I saw it.

A huge hummer parked next to the curb. It would be perfect for getting the hell out of town. Nothing could take one of those things out. I wanted it. I needed it.

"That wasn't there yesterday." Puck said from over my shoulder. "It must be theirs."

I glanced around and found exactly what I was looking for. The dumbass must have left them. I snatched the keys off the table.

"Well its ours now." I said as I headed for the open door.

"We can't just steal it." He said.

I couldn't hide my disappointment. His whole badass thing was such an act.

"Well then its just mine now." I brushed past Puck but he grabbed my arm.

"You can't just leave them here. They'll die." He said. I tried to pull away but his grip was too tight. I hated that he was stronger than me.

"Did you not just see what I saw?" I said. "She's going to be shivering mess and he's a giant spaz. They wouldn't have survived this long without it anyway."

I pulled from Puck and threw my backpack over my shoulder and shoved the handgun into my waistband. Puck watched me with his mouth open in shock.

"You can either fucking team up with them and get your ass bitten or you can come with me and keep your ass bite free." I said before marching out the door. It only took five steps before Puck was behind me.

He rounded the driver's side and gave me a look, that I'm-a-man-and-I-should-drive look. Given I had totaled my car less than a day ago, I decided that maybe it was a good idea he drove. I reluctantly tossed him the keys. We sat in the car and we didn't take a second to think before Puck jammed the keys into the ignition. He gave me a fleeting look like he was hoping I'd change my mind. I wasn't going to.

"What are you doing?" A voice said over my ear.

I jumped out of my seat. Puck did too. We probably should have checked the back seat for people.

"I- um." _Fuck_. I felt the metal of the pistol poking into my ribs. I'd be lying if I said I didn't think about pulling the gun and kicking the three people out of the car but there was a limit to even what I would do to survive and pulling a gun and potentially using it on a warm blooded human was too much even for me.

"You're trying to steal the Hummer. Where's Finn?" The voice was slightly feminine but I realized it was coming from an extremely well dressed man sitting behind Puck. "Finn!" He screamed.

"Keep your voice down." I hushed. "Those things are attracted to sound."

His face fell.

Just then the tall dorky body came out of the house holding the shoulders of the shorter brunette girl – Rachel was her name. She was shaking and holding a picture frame in front of her face. She fell to the ground sobbing and the tall kid was having trouble getting her up again. I could see Puck shaking his head in the corner of my eyes.

"I can't do this." Puck said. He jumped out of the car leaving the keys in the ignition.

I watched him walked over to the dorky guy and shook his hand. They seemed to be talking for a second before he leaned down to help get Rachel off the ground. I looked up in the review mirror and got a better glance at the people in the back seat. Besides the flamboyant boy sitting behind Puck there was a dark skinned girl sitting behind me. She didn't look like she was going to be outrunning a horde of zombies anytime soon. Behind them was blonde haired girl wearing a dark blue baseball cap. It had some symbol on it but I couldn't read it in the mirror. She wasn't watching the scene just staring down at her feet. The bill of the hat was shielding her face.

Puck and the tall kid were both half-carrying the distraught girl towards the car. I cursed under my breath and hopped out of my seat before I held the door open for them.

After they loaded the sobbing girl and closed the door the dorky guy turned to me. He held out his hand.

"Hi, I'm Finn." He said. His voice was kind and his tone was formal like the world hadn't just ended or some shit. He just stared at me for an awkward moment before Puck chirped in.

"She doesn't like to introduce herself." Puck said with an light laugh. "Hell I still don't know her name."

Finn smiled a dorky smile and pulled his hand away. "Well you guys can just hop in the back if that's okay?"

I eyed Puck. _How the fuck did he manage this one?_ He smirked at me.

"Sounds perfect." He opened the door and turned to me. "How about you squeeze in the back with the blonde girl?"

He slapped my ass before I settled in next to the girl. I glared at him before he climbed into his seat. My legs bumped into the girl next to me but she didn't even look up.

"What the fuck is the plan here?" I whispered into Puck's ear.

"We all just happened to be going the same way." Puck said.

I frowned and took in the sight of the people we just teamed up with. There was Finn, who could barely stand on his own two feet. Rachel, The sobbing girl in the front seat who was still staring at the picture frame in her hands. Liberace sitting with his legs crossed on Puck's left and the girl to Puck's right who would probably start wheezing the next time they had to run for our lives. Then there was this blonde girl next to me. Even though she was sitting I could tell she was tall. Her legs were toned and I knew it meant she was an athlete. But she was a catatonic disaster.

_We were fucked._

"If you don't want to give us your real name. We can always make one up." Finn said as he eyed me through the rearview mirror.

"Something sexy though." Puck laughed. "Like Sa-sha." He enunciated the s's.

The rest of the car laughed, minus the girl next to me. She didn't seem to move or react to anything at all. I decided to end this before they started giving me more stripper names and one of them really stuck.

"Its Santana." I muttered. Puck turned all the way around in his seat to look at me.

"What?" Finn called from the driver's seat.

"My name's Santana." I said again.

He smiled at me. "Nice to meet you, Santana." He said.

Then the rest of the back seat introduced themselves. Including Puck who shook my hand just to be a smartass. Liberace was actually named Kurt. And Wheezy was named Mercedes but I liked Wheezy better.

"And that's Brittany." Kurt pointed to the girl next to me who hadn't spoken yet. "She's been through- a lot." He whispered to me like he thought Brittany couldn't hear it if he spoke lower.

I nodded at him until he turned back around.

We sat in silence for a while as we made our way through the empty streets of downtown Lima. I watched my old town pass by me, except it wasn't mine anymore. I felt the blonde girl looking at me but when I turned my head she was already looking back down at her feet.


	5. Handicap

**/* **

**Author's Note: Hey guys, Long Time No Update ;). This is a fun little story to write and I've gotten some inquires about it so I thought I'd start updating it. Its a nice little break from my other fic and I get to curse a lot in this one so YAY! Hahah thanks for reviewing and following and enjoying! **

***/**

I hadn't expected the parking lot of the Lima Mall to be so damn empty. There were a few abandoned cars here and there but there wasn't a body, dead or undead in sight.

That kind of pissed me off actually. I wasted all this time and energy smiling to this band of misfits just so Puck and I could survive the journey to the mall.

And that was all a big fat waste of time.

Finn pulled into a front parking space. He shifted the car into park and looked around the parking lot like he was about to get out.

"What the are you doing?" I called up to the front. "Do you think this is really the time to respect fucking parking laws?"

He turned to look back at me and so did the rest of the car. This was a joke, right?

"Oh, don't give me that look." I said. "You all were thinking it."

Finn sighed but he listened. He started to loop around the divider between the parking lot and the small road that led to the front entrance of the mall. I held my face in my hands.

"Oh for fuck's sake! You drive a hummer like a pussy." I said.

Finn glared at me through the rearview mirror. He gunned the gas and hopped the curb. He slammed on the brakes mere feet from the entrance.

There we go.

Puck gave me a look before we all filed out of the car.

The main windows were covered in government warning signs. I didn't have to read them to know what the little professional government font with the little professional government biohazard sign said. Those stupid announcements were plastered on the television long before the power went out. There was even that reassuring text on the bottom that told us everything was under control and that we were going to be fine.

Some bullshit that was.

Finn pulled the handle of the glass door. It rattled against its bolt.

"It's locked." Finn said.

"No shit, Sherlock." I said. Between the vein, that was starting to pop out from Finn's neck, and the look that Puck was giving me I knew that I probably should start to keep those comments to myself for a while.

Like that was going to happen.

"Well how are we going to get in?" Finn looked at me for some reason.

Maybe he was just preparing for me to comment on how fucking stupid he was for stilling trying to pull open the doors.

"We could break them open." Finn suggested. He was already looking for a weapon to use against the glass.

"Oh yeah that's a brilliant idea gigantor." I said. "That way anything that wants to gnaw on your face can just stroll right in."

The vein pulsed. Finn's eyes shot to me and he took a threatening step towards me. I stood my ground. There were living walking corpses out there and I was supposed to be intimidated by this clown.

Come on.

"I'm really getting sick of your-" Finn started.

There was an engine and odd flapping noise coming over the beginning of Finn's rant. We both turned our heads to see a large white van coming down the main street. It wasn't driving very fast not like it could, even from this distance I could see how lopsided that car was.

Either way that thing was making a shitload of noise.

And it was headed straight towards us.

We watched the van like idiots. I'll include myself in the mix because I just stood there like a dumbass too. Maybe it was because I hadn't expected to see more people or because this genius really just decided to have a parade down what had been the busiest street in town. The van hopped the curb with less grace than the hummer and scrapped to a stop. My teeth gritted from the sound of steel against concrete. I could see why it was lopsided now. The tire was completely gone on the left side. It had been driving on rims for God knows how long.

I felt my mouth hang open when a blond with a short haircut jumped out of the driver's seat. She looked at us before gesturing to Puck and Finn.

"Can you guys help me?" She said.

The boys followed her as she directed them towards the back of the truck. I was pretty sure I could follow Puck's eyed down to her ass.

Seriously?

"Can you hurry up?" She asked with a little hitch in her voice. She glanced over her shoulder before she ripped the doors open. I looked up and saw the horde that was heading straight for us.

Well that's where they are.

I followed the boys back around the truck. We had to get this fucking show on the road and still find a way inside.

"Oh, come the fuck on." I blurted out as soon as I saw Puck and Finn lowering the scrawny guy with the hipster glasses sitting in a fucking wheelchair.

"We've been driving ever since it started getting bad." The girl with the super short hair said. I didn't bother looking at her. I was still watching the horde make it's slow but sure path towards us. "But we blew a tire out on route 75. We had no choice but to stop. Then I saw signs for a mall. Thought it was worth a shot." She shrugged as she spoke. She was speaking to me and not the boys.

Still the boys couldn't stop staring at her.

"So how do we get in?" She asked. She looked at me again. Why the fuck was everyone always looking at me?

"Well not through there." I said. I glared over at the useless lump in the wheelchair. Worrying about him was going to get us all killed. This chick should have dumped meals on wheels a long time ago.

She stepped forward and tugged on the door anyway. We both glanced back at the horde. They covered a lot more ground then I had expected and worse, they had spotted us. I could hear their hungry growls. I thought of that day in the car, surrounded by rotting bodies, the screaming as teeth tore through flesh.

"What are you doing?" The Rachel chick's voice pulled me out of my nightmare. I looked up to see that they weren't looking at me anymore.

The tall blonde girl. That one that didn't respond to questions or talk or even fucking make eye contact was climbing on a dumpster She swung her arms once, twice and then leaped across to a trailer that was a couple feet from the roof of the building.

I had to give her credit, it was kind of genius.

She turned back towards us with a stoic look on her face. She pulled the bill of her head lower before I could meet her eyes.

"This isn't rocket science." I said. "Get the fuck up there."

The horde was gaining on us. I didn't bother to check behind me. I could feel their growls crawling up the back of my neck. They were way too close. Finn jumped in first. He practically lifted Rachel onto the dumpster, ignoring her protests about it being unsanitary. She was lucky she was out of my reach because I probably would have clocked her. Puck was offering a hand to the yet-to-be-named blonde chick even though she didn't seem like she really needed it. The fairy princess and wheezy made their way up to the dumpster and onto the truck in the most ungraceful manner I had ever seen.

I climbed up behind them. I could almost fell the hands reaching out for me but I couldn't panic I couldn't be afraid. Fear meant death.

"Oh shoot, Artie!." I looked up to see the short blonde leaping down back onto the dumpster. The corpses were closer, they were reaching for him as he wheeled closer towards the dumpster. He was reaching out for me like he expected me to give a fuck. I looked up at the trailer. I could just jump and leave these idiots. The faster we got rid of the dumb and the useless the better chance I had at survival. The rest of them needed to learn that. I swung my arms to jump.

"Help me." The short haired blonde called from beside me. His arm was so close. I really just had to reach out and grab it. It wouldn't be that hard. He was all skin and bones anyway. There really wasn't anything for the corpses to eat once they got to him.

What was the point?

I turned back to the trailer, I swung my arms and crouched as I readied myself for the jump.

I felt someone's eyes on me. I looked back to see the bill of that stupid hat. Seriously was eye contact that fucking difficult?

"Fuck it." I cursed under my breath. I turned back towards the cripple and grabbed his arm. With my help we managed to pull him up onto the dumpster as the walking bodies reached out and pulled his chair back.

Then we were nothing but stuck. The trailer was too far to throw Artie.

And now we had decaying hands reaching for our feet.

"Here!" I recognized Puck's voice. I looked up to see a thick chain dropped down from the roof.

Well isn't that just gosh darn convenient.

We wrapped the chain around Artie's shoulder and steadied him as Puck and the others pulled him up to the roof. I jumped up onto the trailer and the blonde was standing next to me.

"Thanks for the help back there." The blonde said. "Name's Quinn." She held out her hand for me to shake.

I brushed it off and turned back to the roof.

"What is your problem?" She followed me.

I was a few steps away from the rest of the group. I glanced down at Artie and his lifeless legs as he now sat, even more uselessly, on the rocky ground of the rooftop.

"What is my problem?" I snarled back to Quinn the idiotic hero-worshipping blonde. "It's one thing if you want to join our fucking misfit circus but seriously?" I point to the lump on the group. "He's going to do nothing but get us killed. As he just proved."

"Maybe if you helped us when I asked we wouldn't have-" She was starting to show some spunk and if I wasn't so pissed off I might have found that promising.

"I shouldn't have helped and next time I won't." I said. "He's nothing but a hundred pound weight that we now have to drag around. And you can't blame me for not laying down my life to protect something so useless."

"My name's Artie." The crippled called up to them from his spot on the ground.

Her mouth hung open and for once she didn't know what to say. I didn't bother to look back at the rest of the group because I knew they had to have the same look on their face.

At least one thing went my fucking way today.

At least the rooftop door was open.


	6. SheetsNThings

**/* Author's Note: Don't worry I'm not neglecting my other story . The next chapter for Good Girl is basically finished and ready to be released tomorrow :) These are just fun to write. Who doesn't like writing stories with the word fuck every where? And with a still broken food I have nothing but time ;). Read, Review and Enjoy. Thanks :)*/**

I stepped out of the rooftop stairwell.

I didn't know whether I found the fact that store was without a single window comforting or terrifying. No windows meant that whatever was outside would stay outside but no light meant I couldn't see if anything was already inside.

"I hate this place." I heard Puck say from behind me.

I glanced sideways at him for a second. I think he could read my face in the dark because he added ."I used to work here. Sheets-N'-Things . The manager, she was such a fucking bitch."

He glanced around the dark room, probably seeing more on memory then Santana could see in this darkness. The stairwell door slammed open, rattling against the wall, the rest of the group marched into the room, trailed by the tall girl with long blonde hair who was back staring at her tattered black converse.

"Can you guys keep a low-fucking profile?" I hissed.

The group stopped in their tracks. I felt half a dozen eyes taking mer in because it was fucking genius to sit in a dark room and stare when something could leap out of the blackness and-

A growl and the sound of boxes tumbling. By the way it muffled as it echoed against the walls I knew it was on the other end of the store. But it didn't matter.

Something was in here.

We weren't safe.

I withdrew the gun from my belt. I knew I wouldn't know what I was shooting or where I was shooting it, not in this dark but anything was better than sitting here and waiting to die. I pointed the gun at where I thought the sound had come from. I had expected Puck to take the hint and at least come up behind me pointing the shotgun. With its spray it had a much better chance of hitting a target.

And even if it didn't hit the right target it could create a fuck load of blunt force trauma.

Puck didn't take the hint and I glanced back at him and realized how empty his hands were.

He didn't have the fucking shotgun anymore.

"Puck." I hissed. I could see the whites of his wide eyes in the darkness."Where the fuck is your gun?"

There was a shift in Puck's form. I could only imagine him scratching the back of his neck nervously. The whites of his eyes were gone too. He was probably staring at the ground in shame.

As he should be.

Fucking moron. I had thought he was the sign of hope in this stupid fucking group of misfits.

I was wrong.

"I forgot it." He said.

"You for-" I caught myself. If this continued I was going to just scream and if I screamed whatever it was that was floating at the back of the store would come straight for us.

A body shifted to stand in front of me.

"Quinn!" Someone whisper-yelled. I turned to see Artie, who was now sitting on top of Finn's shoulders, throw something metallic at the figure in front of me.

The figure caught it, there was a click and beam of light lit up Quinn's smug face.

I saw the flash of silver and saw she was carrying a knife.

Not it wasn't a knife.

Where the fuck does someone get a machete in the middle of Lima fucking Ohio.

She looked back at me and that stupid little smug look grew. "One of these things isn't much of a threat." She said. I scoffed at that. She turned her back to me and shined the light down the aisle. I followed the beam and saw nothing.

She took a few steps forwards and I followed closely behind.

"They're slow. You can easily outrun one. They're stupid. You close a door and they can't open it. They're weak." Quinn was talking lowly as she walked. Pointing the small flashlight in one hand and balancing her miniature sword in the other. She walked with tactical precision like she had done something like thais before. She even used these weird fucking hand signals like Santana was supposed to understand that shit.

"They way that get you is their numbers." Quinn talked as she checked the store like it was second nature. "You fire that gun to kill one. You'll have a whole mob on your hands."

She checked the corner and there was still nothing. She stopped at the end of the aisle and turned to face me.

"Where does a civilian get a police issue P226?" She said.

I stopped in my tracks.

A police issue what the fuck?

"What?" I asked.

Even through the low-light I could see Quinn rolling her eyes. I was this close to punching her right in her pretty little nose.

There probably weren't anymore plastic surgeons around to fix it for her anymore.

"The gun." Quinn said with a sigh.

"I um-" I stumbled on my words given away. "It's not mine." I stated.

"Obviously." She said. She turned back to check the store and I followed behind her. "Did you steal it?"

I didn't really want to fucking talk about this. Quinn must of sensed my hesitation because she added. "Not like it matters anymore. Everything is free game now."

"I was given it." I interrupted.

"Was your dad..." Quinn trailed off slowly. I sensed a sort of sadness there. Just a simple three letter word spoken with utter misery and Quinn's back story was radiating through her skin. I could just tell by the droop in her shoulders and the sigh she made under her breath that it was a sad one.

But I didn't give a fuck. I wasn't here to play therapist and talk about dead family members and hear the heart wrenching details about survival. Everyone had one of those stories now.

And I wasn't going to get into a game of you show me yours I'll show you mine.

"Can we just fucking take care of whatever is in here?" I hissed.

Quinn's shoulder's tightened and she turned back to me in a flash.

"Fine then holster that fucking gun before you get a mob of those things on our asses." Quinn said.

I eyed her. She had a point but the gun was the only weapon I had. I wasn't going to stroll behind her empty handed and get mauled like a dumbass.

"Here." Quinn said with a huff. She grabbed a broom off the shelf next to us. It was one of those wooden ones with the straw looking shit at the bottom. The one meant to look old fashioned. I wasn't sure if people bought it to actually use it or if it was one of those stupid decoration things. Quinn brought the handle over her knee and snapped it with one quick motion.

"What the fu-" I said.

She thrusted the stick into my hand and continued checking the store. I stood there in silence as I watched her walk away.

That had to easily be one of the hottest things I had ever seen.

We reached the end of the store and there was a thumping noise and more growling coming from behind a thick metal door that read "Manager's Office." Quinn made more of her stupid fucking hand motions.

What the fuck did any of that just mean?

"Go in, Kill the fucking thing." I said under my breath. "Got it."

Quinn sighed. "Follow me through the door. Watch the left. I'll get the right."

I nodded.

She counted down with her fingers and then pushed through the door.

Her light beamed around the room until it flashed to the pile of blood and guts on the floor. Kneeling in all of it was another one of those things. It was growling as it ripped through the pieces. It had to have been at this for hours. I wasn't even sure if the pieces of flesh on the floor really belongs to a human. There was nothing left. The thing pulled up a long piece of red flesh and ripped it apart in its teeth.

"Oh, God." I wasn't sure if it was me or Quinn who said it.

Quinn was right. These things weren't very smart. It was too preoccupied with its meal to even notice the light shining on it or the fact that two fresh new bodies were standing not feet away.

It was Quinn who stepped forward first. Bringing the blade of the machete down across the thing's neck. I flinched and before my eyes were open again there was a sickening thud. Then there was a body and a head and they weren't connected anymore.

Quinn wiped the blade on the shirt of the now headless corpse and I felt her eyes on me again.

"You'll get used to it." She said.

I wasn't fucking weak and Quinn had to know that.

"I'm fucking fine." I brushed her off.

Quinn just shrugged.

"Let's clear the stock room and then get the boys to take care of this." She said.


	7. Mattressland

**/*Author's Note: Someone awesome requested a new Chapter. And I made it happen :). This is a fun story to write and a nice little break from GG (Don't worry the GG update is coming later today) So I hope you enjoy. Also Happy Walking Dead Day! Read, Review, Enjoy*/**

I didn't understand why the boys insisted on bitching so much about it.

It was just two dead bodies. One didn't have the fucking head attached anymore and the other was in fucking pieces.

When all the other dead bodies we saw were trying to fucking eat us, they should have been ecstatic to deal with a non-moving, non-violent, run-of-the-mill dead body.

But Mohawk and Prancy Pants insisted on having the bodies wrapped in plastic before they would even think about carrying them to the fucking roof.

And guess who was in charge of that.

The boys were just lucky Quinn didn't chop them up into little pieces herself. She was less then pleased when they handed her a roll of duct tape and a container of garbage bags from the back store room.

I was just pissed that they were wasting our precious time.

Time meant daylight.

And by the time we got the bodies wrapped and the boys did their fucking job the sun was already settling behind the horizon. We were going to get consumed by darkness and these fucking things always got more terrifying at night. Not only were your eyes not as reliable in the darkness but these things seemed to be more active in the darkness.

So now with light fading fast we needed to get settled in for the night. We already had Sheets-N-Things secured and I was content to curl up in the corner somewhere and call it a night. But then someone mentioned a mattress store and all hell broke loose.

"A mattress, Santana." Kurt said. "When was the last time you slept on a mattress."

"We don't know what's fucking in there." I said. I waved off his flailing hands. "Would you rather be alive and uncomfortable or dead?"

"You aren't understanding." Kurt said. The excitement in his voice was spreading around to the rest of the group.

I was fighting a losing battle and I knew it.

"No." I said. I was desperate to cling to some sort of sanity in the group of misfits. "You don't understand. You could fucking die. There could be something in there and you won't see it in the low light and it will bite you."

"Or there could be nothing at all." Quinn countered.

I flashed my eyes to Quinn. She was the one person I expected to be on my side. She was the one person that I thought would back me up.

I saw her shrug in the dim light.

"Then it's settled." Kurt grabbed the broom handle and ducked under the gate and into the hallway.

"Fuck." I hissed.

"It could be the best night of your life." Quinn whispered. She ran to follow Kurt out.

"Or it could be my last." I grumbled.

For some fucking reason I followed them out.

* * *

><p>So the store was empty.<p>

No zombies, no people, just half a dozen glorious mattresses

I checked the price tags to make sure I settled on the most expensive mattress in the shithole of a store.

"You didn't even want to come in here and you pick the best mattress." Wheezy complained.

"Snooze you lose." I muttered into my pillow.

"Well there aren't enough beds and you have the biggest…" Wheezy said.

I felt the mattress dip.

"So you have to share." Wheezy said.

I turned over and held out my hands to stop her. "You step another foot on this mattress and I will strangle you."

She froze in her spot. "You're joking right?"

Another body came into view and I heard Kurt's voice. "Come on Mercedes." There was a bite in Kurt's voice that I was pretty sure was directed towards me. "You can sleep with me."

I let out a harsh laugh. "That'll be the day." I said.

Kurt let out a scoff but I saw him tug Mercedes away and I was once against left in peace.

I didn't know how much time had passed but I could tell by the snoring that almost everyone else had fallen asleep when I felt weight dip the empty side of the bed again. I could fell the warmth of the body against my skin.

It was oddly soothing.

"What the fuck did I-" I turned around to froze when I saw the blue eyes even in the dark.

"Oh" I breathed out.

We were inches apart. I could feel her breath against my skin.

She pushed her weight off the bed and moved to leave. I snatched her wrist. I don't know why I was doing it. I also didn't know why I was fucking shaking.

"You can stay." I whispered.

I could see the white flash of her teeth as she smiled. She settled back into her place on the bed.

It didn't take long for me to fall asleep shortly after that.

* * *

><p>I woke up in a complete state of confusion. I didn't fall asleep shivering and I didn't get jolted awake by images of teeth ripping out pieces of rotting flesh. I was on a plush, comfortable surface. I felt rested and rejuvenated for the first time in a long time. And there was a warm body pushed against my back.<p>

There was a pale arm draped across my hip.

"I never took you for a cuddler." I heard from the foot of the bed.

I looked down to see Quinn standing there with a shit-eaten grin on her face. I pushed Brittany's hand off of my body and jumped out of the bed.

"She's a clinger." I hissed. "There wasn't much I could do about it." I added.

I brushed the invisible dust off my clothes and looked back to make sure Brittany was still asleep.

She was.

"Mhmm." Quinn said. She waved her hand. "I never took you for a smiler either."

She turned to leave the store. "Meet me outside when you're done cuddlefucking."

I let out a breath and watched Brittany sleep for a couple more minutes. I saw her fist curl tighter around the hat in her hand. Her brow furrowed. I couldn't help myself when I leaned down and brushed the hair out of her face. The tension in her body seemed to ease at my touch.

I felt oddly proud at that.

What the fuck was wrong with me?

* * *

><p>I found Quinn ducking behind one of those large mall kiosks. She pointed to the front of the store where I saw a horde pacing in front of those glass doors we had been standing in front of yesterday.<p>

I ducked down and slowly made my way to Quinn and sat down next to her behind the Kiosk. She pulled out a piece of paper.

It was one of those visitor guides with a mall map.

"If those things fucking see us those doors are coming down." I whispered.

"Yup." Quinn said. "But there something we can do."

She pointed to the largest store on the map, _Bob's Home Improvement_. "We can get supplies. Wood, nails, hammers. Then we can fortify-"

"Fortify?" I said. I looked up from the map and back at the blonde. "What the fuck are you?"

"Army brat." Quinn answered. She turned back to the map. "So we send a squad-"

"Squad?" I interrupted. "Really?"

"No, now I'm just being obnoxious." She said with an annoying fucking smirk.

I rolled my eyes and looked back down at the map.

"So we send _a small group of people_-" She reiterated with a bite of sarcasm. "- to get supplied and then we can seal off this glass."

I pointed back to the front of the store and ran my finger over the line that said _Breadstix. _"We should probably close off the windows for here too." I added.

"Or we could just seal off the main door." Quinn added.

"No." I said too quickly and rather defensively. I dropped my voice a couple of decibels. "Breadstix probably has some food and water stored. We could use those supplies."

Quinn eyed me for a second before she nodded her head in agreement. "You're right."

"Breadstix was also my favorite restaurant." I confessed.

She let out a laugh. "Those breadsticks were pretty fucking delicious."

"I have dibs if we find any." I said as soon as I heard the word _breadsticks._

She opened her mouth to protest but then closed it quickly.

"Fine." She said with a hint of reluctance. She slipped the map back into her pocket. "Let's assemble the troops."

"You're being way too generous with that word." I said.

"Probably." Quinn said. She checked the front of the mall before she ducked back into the mattress store. I followed behind her.

"But they're all we got." She added.


	8. Bob's Home Improvement (Part I)

A plan was a plan.

I didn't need the routes and the rendezvous points drawn on the stupid little maps that Quinn had handed out. It was really easy, get the fucking wood and get the fuck out. And of course there was rule number 1: Don't get fucking bit.

I don't really know why she needed to have her little team meeting beforehand. And I don't really know why she had expected me to sit through the whole fucking thing.

Not when I just found a package of perfectly good, unopened cigarettes just sitting in the store room.

So when her and her team of merry soldiers found me lying against the large glass doors that led to Bob's Home Improvement she was less than pleased.

"Those things will kill you." She said as she handed out "weapons" to the rest of the group, more broken broom handles, pipes, kitchen knives.

How fucking efficient.

When she offered me a pointed broom handle I simply adjusted the pistol in the waistband of my jeans.

"You remember what I said about shooting right?" She said.

I nodded. "Why do I need weapons when I have GI Jane to protect me?" I turned towards the door and pulled it open.

I heard her curse through the glass but the rest of the group followed me anyway.

The back of the store was completely quiet. The front of the store was another large set of windows and was almost guaranteed to have a horde of marching bodies standing at the front. I didn't have to listen to Quinn's fucking briefing to know to avoid the giant glass windows with the horde of undead bodies.

That was a little bit of common sense.

They split up into teams of two at Quinn's direction and began to carry wood towards the mall.

It was a cute and effective little system at least from what I saw.

"You could help you know." Rachel grunted as she came back around for her fifth heavy wood board. Finn didn't do anything from his end of the board but I could feel him side-eying me.

"I could." I said. I took a long huff from my cigarette.

"But I'm sure Sargent would want someone watching our flank." I said. I puffed some smoke into Rachel's direction. She coughed.

"You're not even watching a flank." Quinn said as her and Brittany lifted up another piece of wood.

I watched Artie wheeling by with another bag full of supplies. Puck had found him a shopping cart lying around. He was using a 2x4 to push himself around like it was a little wheeled row boat. It was the most fucking entertaining thing I had ever watched. This had to be his third or fourth trip of wheeling back and forth with supplies. I could see his skinny little arms shaking from exhaustion.

He was so useless.

He was so fucking skinny that he wouldn't even make good bait. Unless there were some undead dogs walking around out there.

Then he'd make a great chew toy.

"You could at least help him." Quinn barked. "Instead of gawking."

I opened my mouth to reject her suggestion but then I felt the eyes on me. More specifically I felt _her_ eyes.

I let out a frustrated huff of smoke before I put out the cigarette underneath my feet.

"Fine." I said. I stomped away without looking back. I couldn't look back.

She was there.

I strode over to him and grabbed the two buckets he had on his lap. One weighted like fifty pounds. I cursed as my arm felt like it was nearly ripped off and the bucket didn't even budge.

It was full of fucking nails.

"Just push me." He said.

I sighed but I started to push him towards the door. I awkwardly held the door open with my foot and pushed the cart through the glass door and into the mall.

Puck was there to help unload the bucket of nails and the other bucket which was full of tools and ropes and some other shit I didn't really care to take inventory of.

"Good haul, man." Puck patted Artie on the back before he dropped the buckets alongside six others.

So it turned into a little system of me pushing Artie around as he directed me down the aisles. Normally that shit would have driven me crazy but it took zero effort and it kept Quinn off my back. I could even take cigarette breaks.

"She keeps staring at you." Artie mumbled as he grabbed a handful of batteries and dropped it into the empty bucket in his lap.

"Who?" I asked.

I grabbed a handful of double AA's and dropped them in the bucket. Those could come in handy if I was lucky.

"The blonde." Artie dumped another sleeve of batteries into his bucket.

"I know Drill Sargent isn't very pleased with me."

"No, the other one." He said. "She doesn't make eye contact with anyone. But she keeps looking at you, like that's all she wants you to do."

I shrugged.

"Are you guys-like a thing?" He stared down at the batteries for a second before he looked back at me.

"I mean-" He stuttered. "It's not like I have a problem with it. It's totally fine with me I just-"

"The end of the world isn't going to stop me from fucking who I want to fuck." I said. "But _things_ are what get you killed."

I dropped another handful of double AA batteries into Artie's bucket without making eye contact.

That's when I saw it.

It was the twitch of a limb, maybe an arm or a leg. It wasn't a major movement but it was something. I looked up to see a pair of sneakers poking out from behind a case register.

The sneaker twitched again.

"Fuck." I whispered.

"What?" Artie said.

He followed my glance and saw the sneakers.

"Is that a person?" He asked.

"What's left of them." I said. I grabbed the crowbar Artie had stashed in the back of his cart and stepped towards the feet.

"Stay here." I whispered.

Artie let out a scoff. "Yeah that's not a problem."

I stepped closer to sneakers.

"And what happens to me if you get bitten?" Artie half-yelled half-whispered.

"I'll make sure I eat your face off first." I turned my head to whisper to him.

I was snatched to the ground before I could react. The crowbar was pinned to my side and I was staring up at the biggest mouth I had ever seen.


	9. Bob's Home Improvement (Part II)

**/***

**Author's Note:**

** I'm trying to update a lot more before Halloween. I'm getting all the Zombie Feels from Halloween so I feel like you guys probably are too. **

**Some of you mentioned that the last chapter was short, that was probably because these two should have been shipped together.**

**Read, Review and Enjoy!**

***/**

I felt plastic bottles crush under the weight of my knees as I was dragged down. I tried to use my hand to push myself back up to my feet but a strong grip around my waist kept me still.

I knew that if something wanted to bite me, it would have done it by now.

I turned to see green eyes watching me intently.

He looked old. Not in the years sense because in the real world he wouldn't have been much older than me but his eyes and cheeks were sunken and he looked way too skinny for a guy who's muscles were protruding through the sleeves of his shirt.

I looked around at the floor around us. I was practically sitting in his lap, surrounded by empty bottles and candy bar wrappers.

"How long hav-"

His hand was covering my mouth before I could finish the sentence. His tired eyes gestured towards the space above his head.

That's when I heard it.

It was a mechanical noise but I just couldn't place it. A sort of whooshing that sounded so familiar yet so strange at the same time. One of those many noises I probably knew from the real world but didn't even think twice about.

I glanced over the counter of the register and looked towards the door at the front of the store.

I didn't realize how far away from the others Artie and I had drifted. I was now yards away from the large front entrance. There were countless animated corpses just pacing in front of the door. The mechanical sounds was the automatic doors sliding open as a corpse limped by and sliding closed again a few seconds later. It must have had a battery powered back up to keep the doors working even when the power had gone out.

"We have to get out of here." I whispered. I pulled myself out of his lap and leaned back onto my knees.

He shook his head. "I can't move."

I wasn't sure if that meant that he didn't want to move or that he was physically incapable of moving but I didn't have time to ask my question. There was a clattering of metal from the back of the store where I knew the group was still doing their assembly line shit.

"Finn!" I heard Rachel's high-pitched tone bounce off the high ceilings.

I closed my eyes as the clattering and noise settled down, when the silence recovered it seemed like it was somehow quieter now.

Then I realized why.

The door had stopped.

I lifted my head up over the counter one more time to see the bodies slowly limping through the wide open doors. They weren't growling or frantic, they seemed more curious, attracted to the sound but not quite understanding the source.

I pulled on the blonde dude's arm but he shook his head again, more determined this time.

I pulled the gun from the waistband of my jeans and felt pleasure at the way his eyes widened at the sight of it.

"You are going to come or you are going to die and I'll be damned if I let an undead Steven Tyler clone chew my head off." I said.

I barely had to raise the gun before he was struggling to his feet. I could see the way his muscles shook from the lack of use as he shifted to a standing position but I knew once we got some actual food into him he could actually be of some use.

I could hear the shuffling of the rotting feet as the bodies made their way closer.

Their stench made my stomach churn, I would probably never get used to that smell.

The growls echoed off the rafters.

They had spotted us.

"Fuck." I pushed Huge Lips forward. He stumbled a few steps before he gained his balanced again and starting running.

I followed him.

The moving corpses weren't very fast, any unhindered, semi-healthy human could easily outrun a couple dozen of these things. But they still seemed to get faster when they sensed a meal close by. And that just made me want to run faster and faster.

Artie's eyes were wide and terrified when I started pushing him forward.

I started sprinting, pushing Artie towards the glass entrance.

The rest of the group was already filing through the glass doors, the growls of the horde were unmistakable and the tall ceiling of the store only carried the sounds these things made further.. I could see Quinn directing them to different sides of the security curtain preparing to pull it down as soon as we got in. We had plenty of time to get through the door and get the curtain down before the corpses caught up to us. We just had to keep running.

Then I heard a disgusting splashing noise.

Apparently a week of candy and soda didn't agree well with Stock boy's stomach. He stopped dead in his tracks to vomit again. I couldn't stop for him. I kept up the pace, pushing Artie and his cart in front.

I was done giving out favors. I had done enough for Big Lips, he had to save himself. We were several yards from the glass doors when a still wide-eyed Artie grabbed my arm to get my attention.

"You can't leave him!" He gasped. He looked over my shoulder at the stock boy. He was still leaning over his knees and panting.

I shook my head.

I wasn't playing hero.

Heroes die.

I looked up at the rest of the group my eyes instantly gravitated to a pair of blue one's.

The most beautiful shade of blue I had ever seen in my life.

I never thought I'd see eyes that beautiful in this world again.

I pulled my eyes away. I had seconds to come up with a plan. I looked back and saw the corpses inching closer to the stock boy. He coughed and gasped on his knees, he either didn't notice the bodies surrounding him or he just didn't give a fuck anymore.

I let out a huff of air.

"Duck." I shouted to Artie.

"What?!"

I gave the shopping cart one last shove before I let go. Artie thought to cover his head at the very last second as the shopping cart crashed through the glass. I turned back towards the blond-haired moron on the floor just as I heard the glass shattering to the ground.

The noise only intensified the growling and moaning of the corpses.

I lifted my handgun and put a bullet into the brain of the first corpse that was leaning in to sink it's teeth into the man's bicep. I unloaded a few more rounds into the few other leading corpses. Their bodies fell against the shuffling legs of their predecessors. It slowed them down but only for the couple of sections it took for them to step over it. I reached Big Lips and pulled his arm up until he was on his feet. I dropped a couple more bodies with some well-placed shots.

I felt an arm on my shoulder. I rounded and nearly shot Puck in the face. He looped the dude's arm around his shoulder and dragged him back towards the glass.

I held back and dropped a few more of the swarming bodies to slow down their assault.

_Bang_

_Thump_

_Bang_

_Thump_

I thought that if I hit enough they would slow down enough. I thought I could make a dent. I thought I could do some damage to their numbers but I was so fucking wrong. There were so many of them. Some still wearing their pajamas, some wearing clothes so tattered I couldn't tell what they originally were. Some were still looked human if it were for the browning of their skin and their black eyes soulless eyes. Others had limbs torn off or skin hanging from tattered bones.

I tried not to think about who they used to be. Like the one corpse reaching for me that kind of looking like my high school gym teacher.

_Bang._

_Thump._

Fuck I hated that bitch.

I backed up slowly, getting closer and closer to the door. I knew if I continued this that the mall would be swarmed and they wouldn't be able to get the metal curtain down in time.

If I just got a running start I could-

"Lower the curtain." I shouted over my shoulder.

Three corpses were grabbing for my right arm.

_Bang. Bang. Bang._

_Thump. Thump. Thump._

"We can't you'll get-"

"I'll slide under. Just leave me enough space." The corpses were so close I could see the rotted pieces of flesh between their teeth.

"But there's-"

"Just fucking pull the curtain down." I shouted as I pulled the trigger a few more times.

I heard the thunder of metal behind me and I knew they were obliging my request.

I pulled a trigger again and again until the gun clicked.

The clip was empty.

"Fuck." I cursed before I tucked the gun into my belt. I pushed the closes corpse hard on the chest, sending it tumbling backwards against the others that bought me some time, I turned and I took off running. I gathered just enough speed to fall back onto my legs in a sort of baseball slide.

I fell to my back to slide underneath the small space left under the metal security gate and I heard the clank of the metal behind me as the corpses ran up against it.

"Get some boards." I heard Quinn command from over my shoulder.

Sharp rocks dug hard into the palm of my hand, I ignored them as I pushed myself up to my feet.

I took a shaky step forward but lost my balance when my boot slipped on some water.

Someone caught me at my armpits before I tumbled back down.

I looked back up into those beautiful blue eyes and I was sure I was imagining them again.

"She's bleeding!"

I looked around and felt the world getting fuzzy. It was just shades and streaks of blue when I looked back, the eyes had faded away. Maybe I was imagining them. I couldn't make out the shapes. I couldn't make out the eyes anymore.

I wanted the eyes back.

But the world went black before I could see them.


	10. Mall Entrances

When I came to I felt my face smashed against something hard and cold. Something wet pressed against the back of my leg, then it felt like someone was stabbing me with a million tiny little needles.

"Fuck." I gasped. I tried to push myself up but a strong arm pulled me back down.

I turned my head and saw that _her_ face was once against hidden behind the rim of the baseball cap. I saw the piles of bloody towels and pads next to her. There was also a giant sowing needle in the pile.

"What the fuck?!" I tried to push myself up again but this chick was way too strong.

She grabbed something from over her shoulder and gently pressed it against the back of my leg. I looked over to see her hands smoothing out the corners of a long bandaged.

There were a bunch of other, much smaller bandages covering the back of my legs.

Then I remembered standing in what had to be a pool of my own blood.

"Such a shame." I heard someone mutter.

I looked up to see Puck standing near the entrance. I looked around again and realized we were in the middle of Sheets-N-Things. I must have been lying on a table or checkout counter or something. I became suddenly aware that the only thing covering my bottom half was my underwear. I spotted my torn jeans hanging on a chair next to me.

"Hate to see legs this sexy look so mangled." He said.

Puck stepped forward and moved to run his hands over one of my legs. I slapped it away.

"They'll be fine." I said. I pushed myself up to a sitting position, ignoring the screaming pain just to shield myself from Puck's view.

I jumped down to my feet and stumbled as another wave of screaming pain hit me. She grabbed both my biceps to steady me.

"You should probably take it easy for a couple of days." Puck said. His tone had shifted from the playful to serious and that just annoyed me more.

"I'm fucking fine." I said. I grabbed my jeans and gently guided the fabric over my fresh banadages.

"Seriously," Puck grabbed my arm to stop me from falling forward. "Take it easy for a few days, we can handle it."

I let a scoff. "Yeah as you proved today."

I could feel Brittany's body almost pressed up against me. The head radiated off her body, it was intoxicating and distracting.

"Can you guys just give me some fucking space!?" They stood still as I stepped out into the mall.

I was completely overwhelmed by the sound, there were the chaotic bangs of hammers coming from all directions. People were shouting instructions to each other from opposite sides of the mall.

"Puck where the fuck are you?" Quinn ran past me screaming.

Puck pushed passed me and followed Quinn down the hall. I could hear the faint sounds of moans through the walls of wood that were being built.

It sounded like we were surrounded by the undead.

I felt Brittany's body press back up against me. It made me feel better this time. I couldn't be scared if she was already. It wasn't allowed.

I limped as fast as I could towards the direction Quinn had ran.

The Stock boy was there, he was using the wall for support since it seemed like he could barely stand. He was shouting something about support beams as Finn was hammering a 2x4 against the wood planks that were already there.

"Are the windows covered?" Quinn yelled.

I looked to see her standing in the threshold of Breadstix, she must have been talking to someone inside. They must have answered yes because Quinn responded with a grunt of approval.

"Finish that up and meet me by the back entrance. It's worse there." Quinn shot me a look as she brushed past. "Between all the shooting and glass breaking they're really riled up back there, it won't hold much longer."

I followed Quinn back towards the back of the store.

She wasn't kidding.

The security gate was already collapsing against the pressure of the undead bodies. The metal clanged against the beating of rotting body parts against it. The moans grew and echoed through the walls.

I knew just by the sounds that there had to be hundreds there now.

Fuck.

The group struggled against the metal, trying to push it back but their strength was no match for the pure volume of undead bodies. Brittany jumped forward and started pushing up against the gate too.

Not like it made much of a difference.

If they didn't do something they were going to lose this stupid fucking mall.

I spotted Artie in the far corner, he was still in the shopping cart with pieces of glass hanging from his hair. He was hovered over the buckets of supplies he had collected.

"Some fucking help you are." I said as I limped over to him.

He jumped at the sound of my voice but quickly recovered.

"Just the person I was wanting to see." He said without turning around. He pulled a can of _Lloyd's Bee and Wasp Repellent_ from a bucket.

"Oh, really?" I said. I crossed my arms and watched him pull out a couple more aerosol cans from other buckets.

"Are you going to hold the Ozone Layer hostage?" I said.

"Not exactly." He said. He held his hand out over his shoulder. "Lighter please."

I couldn't help the smirk that crossed my face when I pulled the lighter and dropped it into the palm of his hand. He lit up a stream of the aerosol can in an impressive fireball.

"You know that just might work." I said.

He smiled. "Oh it will work."

I pulled Artie's shopping cart towards the metal and helped him out and to the floor. He set up the three other cans he had in front of him.

"Lift up the gate." He said.

The group just stared at him with the wide, confused eyes.

"Just lift up the fucking gate." I said.

"Not all the way." Artie amended when they still didn't move, just enough so I can peek under.

The group looked at Quinn for a fucking answer. She nodded. Puck and Finn lifted the ends of the grate and pulled it up a couple of inches.

Artie lit a stream and poked it under the grate. The smell of burning flesh was almost immediate. I grabbed another can and lit up the other side. It didn't take long for Quinn to follow with a can of her own, she covered the middle.

I'm not really sure what was more disturbing, the smell as the corpses caught fire and slowly burned or how they seemed to kept moving until they're bodies were completely in ashes.

It didn't matter though. Artie's idea was working. The pounding on the door slowed as the fire spread among to the entire horde. The growling continued for a long time after the aerosol cans were depleted but hours later the pounding stopped and all that seemed to be left was the smell.

"Awesome job, man." Puck pounded Artie roughly on the back before he pulled him back up into the shopping cart.

"Yes." Quinn said quickly. She wiped at the sweat on her brow with her sleeve. "Let's get the boards up." She barked to the group.

The rest of them groaned but slowly rose to their feet.

"We need to be prepared in case there are more out there." Quinn barked again.

I leaned back against the wall and pulled my cigarettes from my back pocket and felt around for my lighter.

"How are you feeling?"

A body slumped next to me, it held out my lighter as a peace offering. I took it and lit the cigarette before I closed my eyes to take a long drag.

"Just peachy." I said. I opened my eyes to see Stock Boy watching me.

He turned his gaze to watch the rest of the group work.

"Here, Sam." Mercedes crouched over to hand Stock Boy a bottle of water and some sort of bar. She smiled shyly when Stock Boy took the offering with a quick thanks.

Mercedes turned back to the group and started lifting the wood again.

"No, it's okay." I said even though she was out of earshot. "I didn't want anything."

Stock Boy took a long sloppy sip before he offered me the bottle.

"No thanks Sandra Bernhard." I said with a wave of my hand. "Who knows where that mouth has been?"

He shrugged and took another healthy sip.

"It's Sam actually." Stock Boy said. He offered a shaky hand.

I stared down at it.

"Santana doesn't introduce herself." Puck called as he hammered a couple of nails into a piece of plywood.

"Why?" Stock Boy asked Puck.

"What's the point of introductions if we're all going to die anyway?" I said.


	11. Pharmacy

The sun was already disappearing behind the horizon leaving what little we could see of the sky in a dark shade of orange. There was still a little bit of light poking through the skylight in the hallway. We had gathered around the Kiosk, where the light was the brightest and Quinn was handing out rations of the food she had found to the rest of the group.

Catatonic Girl sat on the highest counter top, her long legs dangled over the edge even though she could have touched the ground easily. They swung to a beat only she was able to hear. She didn't even bother to look up when Quinn handed her an opened can with a spoon poking out of it.

"Do you think that smell will ever go away?" Rachel said. Her face scrunched in disgust as she took a can from Quinn.

It had been hours since we had used the aerosol cans to repel the horde but the smell of burnt flesh seemed to be trapped in the now stagnant air of the mall. Fortifying the glass didn't make me feel more entrenched as Quinn liked to say, it made me feel trapped.

"Could we heat this up?" Kurt said. He pulled a spoonful up from his can and dropped the dark broth back in with a loud _plop_.

"Sure doll." I said. I took a puff from my cigarette. It had only been a day and I was already almost completely through the entire pack. "Just ask the waiter when he comes by, he'll get the chef to heat that right up for you."

Kurt glared at me. "We could easily get a fire going." He gestured towards my lighter that was sitting on the counter next to me.

"Sure, if you want to die of carbon monoxide poisoning." Artie said.

I looked over to see that he wasn't even looking at Kurt as he spoke. Instead he was staring straight up at the skylight.

Kurt gave a frustrated sigh. "I'm sure when we gather supplies from Breadstix tomorrow we're going to find things that need to be cooked. So what do you suggest we do?"

"Make a fire." Artie said casually without looking down.

Kurt threw his hands up in the air.

I could practically hear the gears turning in Artie's head. The little handicapped bastard was definitely plotting something.

"So tomorrow we're gathering supplies and clearing the rest of the mall." Quinn said as she sat down next to Puck on the kiosk counter. "We should find a place to store our food so we can properly ration it."

"There's a janitor's closet." Puck said almost immediately. "Over there." He nodded his head over towards a dark area behind the kiosk. I assumed there had to be a door somewhere back there.

He mouth curved upwards in a grin when Quinn looked his way and nodded.

"We'll clean it out tomorrow." Quinn said.

I was pretty sure Puck had other ideas for the store room but he was too busy trying to charm Sargent Quinn's pants off to remember what he needed it for.

Typical.

We sat in silence for the rest of my meal. The only sounds were spoons slamming against the outer edges of the cans.

My can of cold soup was empty a lot sooner than I had wanted to be. I dropped the can on the ground before I rose to my feet.

There was no reason to sit around in a circle and sing Kumbaya if there I wasn't going to be fed.

I regretted the theatrics though when the pain radiated through my legs. I knew everyone was watching me and it took everything I had to keep my legs steady as I stepped away from the group. But something still gave me away, before I took three steps Puck was calling out to me.

"Did you want aspirin or something?" He said. "I'm sure we can find something."

"I'm fine." I yelled over my shoulder. I quickened my pace towards the entrance of Mattressland. I just had to get through the doors and out of their sight-

But it still felt like my skin was ripping open again. I swallowed a painful grunt that was threatening in the back of my throat.

I heard Puck mumble back to the rest of the group but I was too concentrated on getting through the door to listen to make out what he was saying. I curled up on the left-hand side of the most expensive bed.

I laid there for hours trying to ignore the pain radiating through my entire body. Even when I stood perfectly still if felt like heartbeats of pain were shooting through my body.

I just wanted it to stop.

I felt the dip in the bed at my back. I could feel the warmth off her body and I knew it was hers.

She froze, hovering over me and for a second I wondered if she could feel the way my whole body was quivering. I held my breath in an attempt to steady myself. It must have worked because she settled into the bed a few moments later. I listened to the stillness of the room and heard her breathing settle as she drifted off to sleep.

I counted her breaths like sane people count sheep and slowly drifted off to sleep.

When I woke the early morning light was poking into the store from the outside skylight. I shifted my legs gently but the pain seemed worse. It was like it had built up all night and released itself in the first morning movements. I couldn't hold in a whimper of pain that escaped my lips.

I blinked the morning blurriness out of my eyes and slowly turned to make sure I hadn't woken up the blonde sleeping next to me. I turned slowly to face her.

Her spot on the bed was empty.

Everyone else was sound asleep, despite the obnoxious snoring coming from Wheezy. I rose to my feet and ignored the pain as I slowly limped my way out into the hallway.

The pain seemed to lessen as my muscles loosened.

I paused at the entrance to Mattressland and took in the rest of the mall. Brittany wasn't sitting on the kiosk counter. She wasn't near the edge of the front fountain. But I did see that the security gate for the Pharmacy was pulled up.

Quinn had been very adament about keeping the security gates of the unchecked stores down to keep anything from crawling out during the night. She had checked and double checked them before dinner.

There's no way she would have gone to bed with one of them up like that.

I heard a crashing noise and a guttural growl and I knew something was very wrong.

I took off at a sprint, ignoring the fresh blood that was trickling down my leg.

I ducked under the fence and followed the sounds of crashing until I found her down the fair aisle.

She was pinned to the wall, her strong arms were keeping the snapping jaws of the corpse from biting into the skin of her neck. My pistol and its fresh clip were in my backpack next to my bed in Matressland. I needed to find a weapon and I needed to find it quick.

I looked down to see a display of canes lying on the ground near my feet. I picked the first one off the ground and jumped forward. I wrapped the cane around the corpse's neck from behind and used all the strength I had to pull it back. The change in the distribution of weight sent me and the corpse tumbling backwards. I let out a grunt as I fell on my back and the rotting corpse fell on top of me.

It twisted on top of me a few times but my grip on the cane didn't loosen. It did manage to pull us sideways as it tried to pull away from me. My arms struggled to keep it under control as it tugged at me.

There was a squishing sound and all the struggling stopped.

I looked up to see the sharp end of a broken broomstick handle buried into the corpse's right eye. I pushed the lifeless corpse away and turned to look up into wide and terrified eyes. She backed up until her back was pressed back against the Pharmacy wall.

I pushed myself to my feet. The overwhelming sense of relief quickly drained away.

Now I was just pissed.

"What the fuck were you doing?" I took three long strides across the floor and slammed my fist against the wall next to her head. She flinched away from it and looked back at me. Her blue eyes bore into mine but she still didn't make any movement to speak, she just looked back down at the floor.

I slammed the wall again."You could have died!" I snarled. My face inched closer to hers until I could feel our breath mingling in the air between us.

She swallowed, tears threatened in her eyes.

I didn't care.

My fist beat the wall one more time.

"Use your fucking words." I inched closer, I could practically feel her skin on my lips as I spoke. "I'm sure you've been through a lot and I'm sure it fucking sucks but we're all in fucking hell. Get-the-fuck-over-it."

I slammed my fist one more time before I pushed off the wall. I took a huff of breath to steady myself.

"You were hurting." Her voice was so unfamiliar, so unexpected that I had to turn just to make sure she was really speaking. She looked up at me, a single tear fell down her cheek. She pulled a bottle off the rack and shoved it into my hands before left.

I twirled the bottle of pain medication between my fingers as I heard her footsteps march off.


	12. Rooftop (Part I)

I guess a normal post-end-of-the-world human would have been gagging at the smell of rotting meat in the Breadstix kitchen but to be honest it didn't even register on the Richter Scale of stenches anymore. And I learned to appreciate shit that smelled that bad and wasn't trying to claw my face off.

The shit-ton of supplies didn't hurt much either.

I didn't really know how I should feel about my favorite 'Italian' restaurant having stockpiles of boxed pasta and canned sauce. Then again how much quality did I really expect from a place that gave away unlimited breadsticks to every table?

Sure all the canned food and preprocessed meat that managed to survive was great. And enough breadsticks to fill several wheelbarrows wasn't too shabby either but the best part of the day was when Puck managed to bust the lock on the wine cellar.

Of course none of it was high quality shit but what did I really care? Wine was wine and when the group made plans to get fucking sloshed that night in celebration of having our stomachs full of hot food for the first time in months I was too fucking caught up in it all to really even take a second to decide whether it was a good idea or not.

Then I thought about it.

It was a brilliant fucking idea.

We didn't have any worries at the moment. The mall was completely sealed. A couple of the guys, under Quinn's command were clearing the rest of the stores and we were stocked on food and water. We had to spend most of the day moving the cans from the kitchen to the makeshift storage room at the back of the mall. It had been a Janitor's storage closet but we, Quinn mainly, decided this was a better place to keep it. She had muttered some military words that explained the importance of keeping the food back here but I honestly didn't give enough fucks to decipher her code.

After Quinn and her 'squad' had returned from clearing the rest of the stores she came back and started fucking talking to me. She was 'briefing me' on what her, Puck and Sam found in the other stores and what supplies she thought would be useful for later supply runs. I spend more time wondering why the fuck I needed to know all this instead of actually listening to what she was fucking saying. She followed me each trip, grabbing cans from my pile to lighten my load.

When we finally dropped some cans of corn at the storage closet she pulled out another mall map from her back pocket. It was crumpled and torn and disgustingly damp probably from Quinn's fucking ass sweat. I pinched the corners as I looked down at the map. I saw names written along next to the stores.

I raised an eyebrow at Quinn.

"I kept Mattressland for you." Quinn said. She traced the outline of the store with her fingers, that's when I noticed my name scribbled underneath the store. "That bed was too big to move out of there so I figured you rather say with it than leave it."

I nodded. I honestly didn't give a fuck where I slept but I'd definitely admit that bed it the most comfortable bed I have ever sleep in. I'd fucking take it.

"But the one rule is that no one can stay alone in a store." Quinn said. "I asked Brittany if she wanted to stay with you and she said - well she nodded - and so you got a new bunk mate."

I kept my eyes trained on the paper. I felt like Quinn had arranged this purposely, she was looking for a response from me and that bitch was getting absolutely nothing.

I didn't know why I was so content to have Brittany with me. At least she would be the least fucking annoying roommate out of all the other fucking rejects here. Wheezy snores (ironically enough) The hobbit still wakes up screaming at least once a night. And I swear I hear someone sobbing in the middle of the night and I'm not sure if its Ladyboy or someone else equally feminine.

But then again Brittany probably still fucking hates me after what happened this morning at the pharamcy and actually I hadn't seen her all day.

Well at least I now know she wasn't dead.

"Where is Brittany?" I tried to sound as nonchalant as I could but Quinn was tilting her head trying to read my expression

"She's on the roof, helping Artie." Quinn added.

My eyes shot up.

Fucking Artie?

I could feel Quinn studying me. She crossed her arms across her chest and had the most annoying smirk on her face.

I felt caught and I didn't even know what I did in the first place.

"I'll see if he needs any other help."

A bemused smile crossed Quinn's lips. "Sure thing." She said. "I'll take over the duties in the kitchen and keep the gang in line."

I walked away without another word. I wasn't really sure how I was supposed to respond to that. When the fuck did I become like her second in command?

I stepped onto the roof and already felt a wave or relief. The air was relatively fresh out there.

Well after you got used to the smell of rotting and decaying flesh.

I found Brittany and Artie hunched over a notebook in the middle of the roof. They were both sitting in the rooftop gravel, Brittany's legs were crossed Indian-style and Artie was sitting with his legs bent in a bunch of awkward and uncomfortable directions. But then again he couldn't feel them anyway so it wasn't uncomfortable for him.

But it was weird as fuck to look at.

I swear I could hear them whispering to each other.

Was Brittany fucking talking to someone else?

Fucking Artie.

I took a few steps closer and my sneakers dug into the gravel of the roof. Brittany was the first one to look up the smile on her face faded into another expression I couldn't read. Part of me wanted to shrink and run away.

I wasn't going to be driven off by some death glare from a mute who's mad at me because I told her the fucking truth.

Even if it was a little bit harsh.

"Hey Santana." Artie called. He glanced between Brittany and I for a second with a knowing look.

Was she even talking to him about the shit that went down this morning?

What the fuck?

"Hey Artie." I said after I finally pealed my eyes away from Brittany's beautiful blue one's. "What are you working on?"

"Come take a look." He waved me over.

I didn't take a step forward until Blondie looked back down at her notebook.

I stepped closer and glanced over Artie's shoulder. He had a little house looking structure drawn in black ink with some enhancements added in blue pencil or crayon.

"We're building an exhaust over the skylight." Artie pointed to the point in the skylight where I guess he planned to build. "It'll let smoke out. So we don't suffocate and die and it'll keep rain out too." He pointed to the little black roof he had drawn.

"Brittany." Artie paused to nod over to Brittany but she refused to look up. "She added some things to help catch rainwater. "We can just add gutters, here." He ran his finger over the right side of the roof. "And here." He ran his finger over the left side. "And just tilt it up just the smallest of angles." Artie tiled the notebook upwards. "Then we can just place buckets at the back." He pointed to two buckets crudely drawn in blue. "And we'll get a new supply of water every time it rains."

I nodded down at Artie. I felt oddly proud.

"That's very smart." I said. I saw the hint of a smile grace Brittany's lips. She locked eyes with me once more before he face faded to a more solemn expression.

The door behind me squeaked open and I looked over my shoulder to see Puck standing at the entrance. He nodded over to Artie.

"Quinn said you were looking for me." Puck said.

"Yes." Artie glanced over at Brittany, red was starting to flush his cheeks. "I was wondering if you could -help me down. Brit and I need to gather supplies."

I internally cringed at the chosen nickname. It was my nickname.

That's a fucking stupid thought.

It's not like Brit is that original of a fucking nickname for someone named Brittany.

"Sure thing." Puck jumped in front of me and lifted Artie over his shoulders before he could say anything else.

Brittany was on her feet and holding the door open for Puck and Artie before she followed them down the stairs. She held the door for a second before she disappeared back again.

I took a second to take in the sights around me. It seemed like the bodies couldn't make out our movements up here. Maybe they couldn't see very far anymore. I watched at the dozen or so bodies marched slowly around the mall parking lot some stepping what looked to be like pieces of other human beings.

Those people lucky enough to be so badly eaten that there was nothing left to reanimate.

Never thought I would think that fucking sentence.

"Fucking terrifying isn't it?" Puck said.

I jumped.

"Sorry." He added as he stepped up next to me. "Didn't mean to scare you."

I looked back and noticed the Puck was alone.

"I left Artie down with Brittany and the tools." Puck said with a shrug. "She could probably lift him up here himself if she wanted to." Puck said. "Chick's like an ox"

"He's not going to last long." I said. I looked back over at a corpse of what had once been a teen girl judging by the way too short skirt and what was left of what had probably been a way too low cut of a shirt.

Kinda of looked like the shit I would have worn in high school.

"None of us are going to last at this rate." Puck added. I followed his eyes over the horizon as a couple of more bodies were making their way towards the mall. They weren't much of a threat but Puck was right, just a couple more a day or a couple more an hour and one too loud sound and our barricades would never hold. Not to mention that fact that the food and water could last us a good long while, but what about after that?

But that wasn't the immediate issue.

"But if we had to make a run for it." I said. "I just don't want you to get attached to him." I glanced over at Puck who was still staring down at the moving corpses on the ground. "He can only live so long out of a fucking shopping cart."

"Well then we could get his wheel chair back." Puck said.

I looked over at him and found him nodding over to the side of the mall. I looked down over at the all too familiar dumpster where we had almost lost Artie a few days ago. His wheel chair was still there abandoned by the corpse.

"I'm not fucking going down there." I said.

"Won't have to." Puck said. He took off like a bat out of hell, he pulled the door open and answered my unasked question. "There's a sports supply store with a shitload of hiking gear. We can get it set up and get the chair back up here before Artie can ever decide which size screws he wants to use."

Before I could protest the door was shut behind him and I could hear the patter of feet against the metal stairs. And all I could think of was how many ways this could go fucking wrong just so we could prolong the happiness of a kid that was just going to die soon anyway.

**/* Author's Note: I love writing this story and some of you see to really like it so I figured I'd give you a couple of updates since you deserve it :). Sorry for the delay in writing life has been so hectic for me. Thanks to all that read and review and happy holidays!*/**


	13. Rooftop (Part II)

Puck comes back with a Captain America smile on his face. He's carrying an arm full of thick green rope and a fist full of hooks that look like their straight out of batman's utility belt. I didn't know people actually use that shit in real life.

So I'm not an outdoorsy person, fucking sue me.

Puck drops the rope and hooks at my feet and starts tying them in this ridiculous knot that starts making me think that he's not actually outdoorsy either. He ties his final knot and looks up at me, his stupid little childish smile never fading.

Sometimes I just want to punch him right in the face.

He looks down at the chair and then back at the rope in his hand. It's not nearly enough, its so fucking obvious but it takes Puck another five minutes to figure it out. He starts to climb down and I watch him as I begin to confirm in my head that getting Artie's wheelchair back is the dumbest fucking idea we've had thus far.

I mean can't the little fucker just build himself a new wheelchair.

"Santana!" Puck whisper yells.

I shoot my eyes back to him as he jumps onto the back of the truck that's just above the wheelchair, his rope can definitely reach now.

"I can't lift this thing by myself." He says.

I look back at the wheelchair. It's still standing upright, which is probably a good thing, he can just hook it and pull it over until it's just under the truck, but lifting it up with nothing but a line of rope, that's going to be difficult. He's right. He can't do it on his own.

But there's no way I'm putting my life in danger for some piece of metal.

"Santana." He says in a commanding tone.

I let out a scoff, like he could tell me what to do, like that would fucking remotely matter.

I can feel him studying me and then he turns without another word and throws the fucking hook with the rope attached. It clangs loudly against the chair and I can feel myself cringe at the noise. If I heard it that means that other … things must have heard it too.

And sure enough there's a low chorus of grows that slowly starts to pick up as the reanimated bodies start to make their way towards the source of the noise.

Puck throws the rope again, it somehow manages to clang fucking louder this time and he still doesn't manage to grab a hold of the chair.

"Oh for fucks sake." I shout because it doesn't really matter at this point. I jump down to the back of the truck and rip the rope from his hands because he's fucking useless. I pull the rope back again and toss it this time. It falls in between the back cushions and loops around the rungs on the bottom of the chair.

"Yahtzee." I mutter before I start pulling the chair towards me. Thankfully it comes to me rather easily and Puck lets out a little shout of triumph even though he really didn't fucking do anything. The corpses are still following behind it but they're a long ways away and it really feels like we might actually be able to get this thing back up to the roof.

But then the perfect storm of shit happens Puck reaches for the rope just as the rooftop door flies open. I turn my head just enough to see Brittany's long blond hair and feel the weight of the rope give way. The chair stops and begins to roll backwards until it somehow managed to wedge itself into the side of the dumpster.

"Fuck." I shout.

Puck instantly reached for the rope and throws the hook again, finally he manages to fucking grip the chair and he gives it a hefty pull but the thing is somehow fucking stuck in there.

The motherfucker in the sky really doesn't want us to have this wheelchair.

The chair really won't budge, even with both Puck and I pulling on the rope it doesn't come loose, all we manage to do is make some scrapping noises that attract the attention of the growling corpses and cause them to shift direction towards the new source of sound.

There's a slam and I look up to see a whoosh of blonde hair, first its attached to the a body that landed like a cat on the dumpster cover, then its flowing as the body makes it way to the ground with no more than a couple of yards between the her and the nearest corpse.

"What the fuck is she doing?" I scream to Puck. My whole body shakes. She's going to get herself killed over nothing.

It takes way too long for her to pry the chair loose and scramble back onto the top of the dumpster before a corpse reaches for her. But she manages to get up there and away from the grasps of the bodies and Puck and I pull the chair over and up onto the roof before we run around to the side and manage to pull Brittany back onto the roof.

We all sit on top of the rooftop gravel taking a few deep breaths to calm our hearts from the new excitement.

My eyes meet those familiar blue eyes and I instantly feel my pulse thicken. I'm on my feet before I can realize what I'm doing I'm pushing Brittany up against the brick wall next to the door.

She lets out a little yelp of maybe hurt or surprise but I don't give a fuck. She's lucky she isn't nursing a gaping would that would leave her dead in a few hours and undead in a few more.

"What – the – fuck – where – you –thinking?" I can barely get the words out.

I didn't even realize I was shaking so bad. I'm sure Brittany can feel it where I grasp her biceps I just pray that Puck can't see it. I pray that neither of them see it for what it really is.

"I'm just going to take this to Artie." Puck says quickly.

I don't bother to turn to him. I don't even bother to look at him. I just grit my teeth and stare into wide blue eyes until I hear the door squeak open and then squeak shut again.

Brittany just stares at me with her crystal clear blue eyes and I feel like she can see right through me. I feel like she can see more than I can and that scares me more than anything.

I watch her and wait for a reply, expecting nothing but I just need something, I need something to make this shaking stop. I need to get this out because I can feel the back of my throat scratching and I don't really know why but I know it has something to do with the way my hands won't stop shaking.

Brittany glances down at my hands, particularly my fingers that are vibrating against her bare skin. I know she can feel the way my entire body is trembling.

"I was just trying to help." Brittany looks into my eyes like that answer is what I need to hear, like that answer it at all what matters. There's a single tear falling down her cheek, it falls into the crevice alongside her mouth before it drips down her chin.

Then it hits me.

I'm breaking my number one rule. I'm breaking the one rule that I knew would keep me alive. And I'm breaking it because of her. I use her body as leverage to push myself back from her. I can't take my eyes away from those eyes even as I try to put as much daylight between her and I.

What the fuck is wrong with me?

The trembling seems worse now, like my body can't handle all these shifts in emotion. Brittany seems to notice, her face softens and she takes a step towards me.

I put my hand up to stop her.

"Don't."

I don't mean for it to come out in a begging way, but it does anyway. I brush past her and head for the rooftop door. I need to get away from her. I need to get as far away from her as possible.

Before it kills me.


	14. BBQ

I take another swig. The liquid burns my throat on its way down. It's good. It's perfect. It's everything I didn't know I needed.

It's definitely nothing like the fancy shit I used to always steal from my dad's study when he was working.

It's the shit some cheap motherfucker gets in between trips from his dead-end job to his bitch of a wife.

Something to keep the ghosts away.

I don't know if it worked for the poor bastard who kept this bottle tucked away between his work schedules and inventory lists at the bottom of his desk but it sure as hell is working for me. I'm only on my second glass but I can feel the world start to blur around the edges.

The fire around the barbeque the rest of the group created flickers in the distance. They were so desperate to try out Artie's little invention and so desperate for a hot meal they all nearly came with excitement when Artie showed it to them. I have to be honest I'm a little excited for it myself. It's been so long since I've seen anything so beautiful, and so warm. But I refuse to go near it. Everyone else is gathered around it, they pulled chairs from the sports store and they sit around it tell stories and laugh like their on some twisted fucking camping trip. Rachel has thrown a mess of shit into a huge pot and hung it over the fire to cook.

Everyone seems to be enjoying whatever shit is in the pan. I'm going to take a pass on it today.

There's no reason for me to eat tonight. No reason to eat and waste some perfectly good liquor. Not when it's the only bottle I could find. After we run out I'm going to have to drink some of the pussy light beers the boys are throwing down or some terrible cheap wine that was stocked in the makeshift wine cellar in the basement of Breadstix. I really thought my favorite restaurant wouldn't have such terrible taste in alcohol. But what could I really have expected?

I feel the heat of a body next to me. I glance over to see Quinn sliding up onto the counter top. Her legs swing back and forth over the tile. She takes a short sip from the same glass of wine she has been milking for the past half hour.

"You probably should eat something before you down anymore of that." Quinn says in her commanding tone.

I meet Quinn's eyes before I swallow the rest of the whiskey in my glass win a single healthy gulp. I feel a sense of accomplishment at the way her eyes roll at me.

"I'm not hungry." I say. I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand and pour myself another glass from the quickly emptying bottle.

I can see her raise an eyebrow from the corner of my eye.

"I really don't think it's a good idea for you to drink so much of that." I cringe at the sound of Rachel's voice filling my ears.

I look up to see her studying me, she's holding a cup of what looks like fucking water in her hand. Over her shoulder I can see the blue eyes of Brittany watching me. I snap my eyes back to Rachel, I can feel heat filling my face.

"Did I ask for a fucking intervention?" I grab my bottle and glass and lower myself down from the counter, the whiskey in my glass sloshes around dangerously.

"I just don't think it's a great idea to get inebriated with the current state of things." Rachel says.

"I'm fine." I say. I march away from the pair before one or both of them wind up on top of the fire.

I find myself on the roof again. The darkness hides the walking corpses that I know are down there. It's more terrifying when you can hear them but can't see them. I can hear the scraping of bones and bodies parts dragging along the gravel. I can hear a scattered chorus of low moans that warns me of the death down there. And the smell. The smell is still the worst part. Even from all the way up here their stench fills my noise. I take another gulp of my whiskey in an attempt to dull my own senses.

Is this really all we have left? A life of hiding from these disgusting fucking things. There has to be other people out there. We can't be the only assholes out there lucky enough to stumble upon somewhere safe. I look out over the horizon but I see nothing but darkness. I've never seen darkness like this. No street lights, no car lights, just night.

I look over to where my house would have been but there's nothing but night over there. I don't think there was anyone else left in my neighborhood when I took off. Everyone made their way out when the television went out. I could hear the panicked voices echoing through the neighborhood as families rushed to pack their cars. I watched the Wilsons across the street. Mr. Wilson was tying some suitcases to the roof of the car, screaming at his wife to hurry up. They weren't listening to anything the television said, they weren't packing light and their car was completely full and I didn't see any food or water being packed inside. Not to mention the fact that Mr. Wilson was bellowing to his wife.

I watched the bodies descended upon him, one was locked onto his arm before he know what hit him. There were three ripping open his stomach by the time his wife came out of the house. She just stood there screaming until one of the bodies finally looked up.

I didn't want to watch anymore, I fell back against the window and listened as her screams lessened to a gurgling sound and then stopped all together.

A couple of days later I swore I saw what was left of Mrs. Wilson's face when a body staggered by my window. I tried to never look at their faces again after that.

They aren't people anymore, I had to remember that.

"Santana?"

My entire body jumps. Whiskey sloshes over my glass and falls all over my hand.

I wipe the liquor off my body.

"I didn't mean to scare you." The voice is gentle and careful. For some reason I find the moaning bodies down below less terrifying than the sight that stands behind me.

"Are you okay?" I can feel Brittany's body inching closer to me as she speaks. I swallow the spit lodged in my throat and look at the darkness that surrounds me. I'm stuck here on this rooftop with her and there's nowhere I can go, there's nowhere for me to run.

I finish my glass and steel myself before I turn back to face her. She's a lot closer than I expected her to be, we nearly butt heads.

She takes a step back to give me my space.

"How are you?" She asks. Her face is illuminated in the dim moonlight and I can see the concern in her blue eyes and it makes everything worse. It makes me feel worse. People aren't supposed to care. it makes all of this easier. It makes all my decisions easier.

"I'm fine." I can feel my voice betraying my words. I need more alcohol.

_Where did I put the fucking bottle?_

I look at my feet for the brown bottle, I know I put it somewhere but it's so hard to fucking find anything in this darkness. I whip around and find it on the edge of the roof. I reach for it but it falls from my fingers and gravity pulls it forward. I reach for it but my movements are way too fast for my drunk ass and I start to stumble forward, following the bottle. I'm about to plunge forward and towards the moaning corpses on the ground below.

Warm hands wrap around my waist just as I hear the glass of the bottle smash against the cement. Strong arms pull me back until I gain my footing. I look up to those blue eyes that seem to glisten even in the tiny sliver of light that the piece of the moon casts down on us. My breath catches in my throat and my heart starts to race for all the wrong reasons. I can feel the warmth of her fingers. I can smell the sweet smell on wine on her breath.

I don't know who moves first but before my body can process the heat flowing through it my lips are moving against hers. The kiss is desperate at first but they flow against each other like they belong together. Her touch is burning and soothing at the same time, her fingers tightened against my waist and I push against her as I deepen the kiss.

It's one of the only things that feels so right and so perfect in this shitty mess of a world.

No.

I push off her and stumble backwards falling back on my ass.

My heart thumps against my chest. This isn't something that can happen. I can't get attached to someone. It'll just get one of us killed. And I can't let my libido get the better of me.

I push up to my feet, struggling against the fog of alcohol to finally stand up straight and meet her eyes. Her blue eyes are hidden behind the furrowed brow.

The corpses below moan in anticipation as they make their way towards the source of the noise in search of their next feed.

"You can't do shit like that." I say.

"Help you?" She says.

"Touch me." I say.

"Santana." She says my name gently and takes a step forward.

I stumble backwards nearly falling on my ass again. "And don't fucking say my name like that."

"Like what?" She plants her feet and stares right through me.

"Like you know me." I say. "You don't fucking know me. We aren't a thing. We can't be."

"Why can't we be?" She says. "I don't think anyone would have a problem with it. I'm pretty sure Kurt's very gay." She whispers the last part like it's a secret to anyone.

I dark laugh creeps up through my lips and out my mouth. "You think I give a fuck what those people think?"

"Then why can't we-"

I hold my hand to silence her. "Because of that."

The moans are louder now, more of the bodies must have come to investigate the source of the noise.

"Because of those fucking things." I say. "The world isn't fucking rainbows and kittens. You all need to stop fucking pretending like it is."

I try my hardest not to look back at those blue eyes before I push the door open and stumble down the stairs.

**/* Author's Note: Thanks to all that read and Review and follow. I love that you guys enjoy this story. It's so much fun to write. Happy St. Patty's Day and Happy Walking Dead Day!*/**


	15. Road ( Part I)

**/*Author's Note: Sorry I know its been a long time. Life has been really hectic and apartment/job hunting is sucking up most of my time lately, sorry guys. I hope you like this next chapter thought. */**

My skin felt like it was on fire. I tried to open my eyes but the light was too bright.

_What the fuck?_

I felt gravel sticking to my wet skin as I sat up. I could hear the faint moans of the walking bodies. I forced my eyes open.

I was on the roof. I knew at least the much. I saw a couple of up turned bottles lying on the ground next to me. It looked like I had come up here last night double fisting the cheap ass wines from Breadstix. The pounding of my skull hinted just how fucking cheap those bottles must have been.

I had to shield the rising sun from my eyes as I pushed myself up with my other hand. I stumbled to my feet, kicking the bottles against each other. The clang alerted the animated corpses to my location and I could hear the moaning pick up. I knew they were swarming against the building trying to get to me. But they were harmless, for now. As long as I was up here and they were down there, they would moan until they forgot what it was they were moaning about.

I pushed myself through the rooftop door and slammed it shut behind me. It was like I put a lid on top of the most terrifying jar. The sounds stopped and the sunlight lessened, I could almost open my eyes all the way. If it weren't for the fucking headache I'd be golden.

I made my way down the steps, I figured it was still too early for the rest of the gang to be up, maybe I could find some Aspirin and curl up into a ball and fall back asleep before it kicked in and no one would be the wiser.

But that wasn't the case.

As soon as I stepped out of the store I heard yelling.

The sound was more offensive then the moaning on the rooftop. I stopped in the doorway, I could make my way back up towards the offending sun and the stench and I wouldn't have to deal with whatever was going on down here.

I took a step backward into the store, ready to make my escape.

"Santana!" I heard my name bellowed and I instantly froze. I turned to see Rachel marching towards me.

It was too fucking late to escape this bullshit now.

"Do you know what's going on?"

Rachel didn't stop marching until she was less than a foot away from my face. I was about ten seconds from vomiting all over her and I wasn't going to do anything about it if the feeling struck.

I only shrugged in response and that seemed to antagonize her more. I saw the rest of the group surfacing from their rooms and wiping the grogginess from their eyes. Liberace was wearing a particularly flamboyant pajama set that I'm pretty sure was made for women.

"Santana!" Rachel bellowed. "Are you listening to anything that I've said?"

I turned my focus back towards Rachel not really because she was screaming but because there was a particular blonde poking her head out of Mattressland and I was desperate to avoid eye contact with her.

Even if that meant looking at Rachel.

"What is going on Rachel?" I said with a release of a breath.

"The water is digusting." She said.

I only just noticed that she was carrying a pink loofa in one hand and shower caddy in another, seriously where they fuck where they getting all this fancy shit.

"I'm sorry?" I said. "You can file a formal complaint with corporate if you'd like."

Rachel let out a frustrated huff. "You don't understand." She pointed at me with the ridiculous pink loofa, I would have laughed if it weren't for the pounding headache she was making even worse.

"I've managed to keep up with my daily cleanse every day since we've gotten here. Ever day except today because the water stinks and it's a weird color."

"A weird color?" I said.

I suddenly felt a wave of concern and it wasn't for Rachel's cleaning habits. We have been lucky enough to find the faucets and toilets working in the bathroom, they have been our sole source of water since we got here but if something was wrong with the water that could mean a big problem.

"There's no way I can clean myself with water that smells like that." Rachel said.

I eyed her for a second, I could feel the eyes of the entire group watching me, I could feel Brittany's eyes on me and for some reason a wave of anger flowed through me, or maybe it was the wine coming back for more. I took a threatening step forward, my face was not inches from Rachel's.

"No, you don't understand." I said. "This isn't a fucking Holiday Inn. You aren't on fucking vacation. If there is something wrong with the water system we have much bigger problems then whether or not you get a facial scrub."

Rachel's eyes drifted down to her feet when I took a step back. I didn't bother looking up to the rest of the group I just pulled back and made a bee-line for the bathroom. I could hear the creaking of Artie's wheels behind me. I think he knew better than to say anything to me right there. I was far from in a mood for conversation.

He followed me into the woman's bathroom and waited as I slowly pulled the faucet for the first sink. The water sputted out, it was a dark reddish brown color and Rachel was right, it did stink. The smell was similar to the smell outside, and it made me sick to my stomach.

"They're in our sewer system." Artie said.

I didn't respond, I didn't need to, I knew he was right. There was at least a body, maybe more and it was contaminating the sewer system. This water was completely undrinkable.

It was still early in the morning but I was happy that everyone was aware of the urgency of the problem. Even Rachel put back her fucking morning cleanse kit, at least I didn't have to shove that up her ass. And I was about 20 seconds away from doing it.

"We do have a couple of emergency bottles we saved from Breadstix." Finn offered.

"Those won't last more than a day or two if we really ration them." Quinn countered.

I pinched the bridge of my nose. The last thing I wanted to deal with was a crisis alongside this fucking hangover. I could feel them all staring at me waiting for me to fucking come up when an answer. I never remembered following through with this fucking role. Why doesn't the army brat come up with a fucking solution?

"We should deal with this before we're actually dying of thirst." I said. I kept pinching my nose, anything to avoid looking at them, looking at her. I knew she was watching my every move. I could feel those beautiful blue eyes tracing my footsteps as I paced back in forth in front of them. "We all know what this means." I added without looking at them. "If we want to stay here, we knew this would come up eventually and now we have out first test."

I finally removed my fingers from the bridge of my nose and looked out at them. "We need to make a supply run. We need to find water."

There was a few moments of heavy silence before it seemed like everyone in the group started talking at once.

There were cries of who had to go on the supply run, there were recommendations of places to go, someone mentioned a bar down the street (probably Puck) others wanted to go back to their house while we were out there. Others didn't want to go at all, typical.

I pinched the bridge of my nose again the pain in my head was picking up again. "Shut the fuck up!" I yelled.

The chatter stopped immediately.

"We're taking a small group and we'll look over maps until we find the best place to go to find a good supply of water, we aren't making any fucking unnecessary trips so you can rule out visiting your dear Aunt Sheri on the other side of town and we sure as fuck aren't going back to get your favorite stuffed bear from your bedroom." I said. I stopped and looked back at them. My eyes unintentionally found Brittany's in the group. I tore them away and focused on Artie instead. "We need to be smart about this. We need to do this fast and quick so no one gets hurt."

I saw Artie's eyes widen and then a smirk fell across his face.

"I think I know where we can go."

I brought the binoculars to my eyes and looked over the road where Artie had pointed and then I saw it.

It was one a fucking water delivery truck and it was less then a football field away from the fucking mall.

I couldn't believe our fucking luck. I checked around the truck to see where it could have opened, where there might have been a pond of fresh water around it. I just couldn't believe after all this shit we've had to deal with galloons of fresh water was right there. It was so fucking close I could almost taste the fresh water.

I pulled the binoculars away when Artie started talking again.

"We just have to cause a distraction on the other side of the mall, we can have a group do that while a few of us go and steal the truck." He said.

"You're assuming the truck driver just left his keys when he ran for his life?" I said.

Artie shook his head. "Well I just thought we could hot wire it if the keys aren't there."

"You know how to hotwire a car?" I said.

Artie nodded.

"Well dip me in shit and roll me in breadcrumbs." I said.

Artie's smirk spread across his cheeks.

Of course Quinn had to draw out one of her fucking maps and waste more of our fucking time while she spread out a map she dress on large paper across the tile in the center of the mall. The rest of the group gathered around and listened to her spout out fancy army language and plans of attack.

It was fucking useless and annoying.

I had to stop her when she started spouting something about rendezvous points.

"Quinn we aren't fucking storming Bin Laden's compound." I said. She paused the circle she was drawing on the paper and looked up at me. "We are just stealing a fucking water truck."

"A truck that's surrounded with thousands of hostiles." She said.

"And instead of wasting the day and the sunlight with this fucking bullshit, why don't we just give Rachel a fucking megaphone and put her on the other side of the mall. Artie will give us a quick tutorial on hot wiring and Puck and I make a quick run out to the truck."

Artie threw his hands up in the air. "Wait a second." He said.

The entire group turned to look at him.

"I'm going to that truck." He said.

I let out a laugh. "What part of 'quick run' don't you understand?"

"The part where you think I could teach you to hotwire a car in twenty minutes. It isn't that easy. And if you want to limit the number of trips and the time you spend out there then you're going to have to bring me."

I let out a huff of air. "Artie you can't –"

"Don't tell me what I can't do. People have spend t my whole life looking at this chair and telling me what I can and cannot do." He said. "I know this isn't a vacation, and I know you don't think I'm useful but I want to contribute. I can contribute if you stop getting in my way."

I had to give him credit. No other person besides Quinn and Puck had volunteered themselves to go beyond the safe walls of this mall. At least this little motherfucker wanted to help.

"Okay." I said. "You can come."

Artie let a smile slip from the seriously glare on his face. Puck gave him a strong pat on the back.

"Loud mouths, I want you to find the loudest and noisiest shit in this entire shit hole and go to the roof and stand on the other side and make a fucking racket. Puck, Artie and I are going to make a go for the truck while Quinn stays behind and keeps you shitheads in line. Sound good?" They all nodded but they still sat their like dumbasses.

"Get fucking going." I said. They took off. I saw Brittany following behind them. I felt a pang in my chest when I realized how obviously I had been ignoring her. "Puck I need you to find quiet weapons, large knives, swords, bats, nothing loud, we can't bring guns out there, we make any noise and all hell will break loose." Puck nodded and rose from his seat, he took a few steps towards out of the group when I grabbed his bicep. "Make sure to get Artie something he can really swing." I whisper. Puck eyes locked on me and he smiled.

"Thanks for letting him come." He said before he disappeared into the store. "I know it means a lot to him."

I didn't bother to respond I wasn't doing any favors.

I pulled open the door. I could hear the shouting from the other side of mall, there were pots and pans being banged together and I could swear I heard a fucking trumpet, where the fuck did they find a trumpet?

I made my way to Quinn, Puck and Artie who were waiting for me on the side closest to where we'd seen the truck. I could see the swarm of corpses thinning as they began to push there way around the building.

"Looks thin enough to start making your way down there." Quinn said. I nodded to Puck and we made our way towards the edge of the roof. We lowered Artie and his chair down slowly as we descended into the solid cement out of the roof. It felt weird to be down here. It was unsettlingly to know what those things and how many of them were around to do it.

I think the boys noticed my hesitation because Artie nudged me with his hand. I looked over to him and he had the most confident smile on his face.

"Let's go get some fucking water." He said before he wheeled off towards the road.

The corpses didn't pay much attention to us. There were a couple that we had to take out with the bats Puck had grabbed but that was more because they had stumbled into the walkway that we had to follow. Most of them were more concerned with the source of all that noise. They knew that noise meant food and they were too stupid to notice that there was fucking food just strolling alongside them.

The walk felt like it was taking hours. I could hear the sounds of the rooftop lessening but it wasn't long before I heard the telltale sounds of Quinn barking commands and the sound frantically picking up again.

By the time we reached the truck I could hear panting coming from Artie. His shoulders were slouched and it looked like he was struggling to continue to push his wheels. Puck fell behind him and started pushing him the rest of the way.I really hoped Artie could get this truck started, I didn't think we'd make it the rest of the way back, not with Artie like this. I finally reached the back of the truck and lifted up the door.

I lifted up on of the slides on the side of the truck and saw those large bottles that they use to fill water coolers and there had to be hundreds of them lining the walls.

I jumped down from the truck and pulled the door shut.

"This was really a great find …" I turned around to find a corpse inches from my face. It growled before it leaned forward and bared its teeth ready to sink them into me. Then the corpse toppled over and fell to the ground. I was too shocked to really process what was happening.

Artie's wheelchair got caught on the pant leg of the corpse. And I could seem him struggling against the rotted corpse but I couldn't move. I could still smell the rancid breath on my face. Puck pushed past me to bury his baseball bat into the side of the corpses head. The head collapsed against the blow, brain matter poured onto the pavement. He pulled Artie's wheel loose from the now unmoving body and let out a cry that pulled me from my trance. Puck looked back at me with the most distraught look on his face. I followed his glance over to Artie and found what he was staring at. I couldn't help the gasp that escaped my lips.

A bite mark had ripped through Artie's pants, and punctured the skin just below the knee.

"I couldn't feel it." Artie said looking up at me. "I didn't know. I couldn't feel it."


	16. Road (Part II)

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**Author's Note: Howdy Guys, I thought I would reward you guys for being so patient with me and staying with this story so I'm giving you another update super quick! I'm kind of writing this like the comic book series The Walking Dead which basically just means its going to be short bursts of stories (hopefully I'll publish them more frequently soon when things start to settle down) Thank you to everyone who reads, reviews and follows if you wanna chat or ask questions or hound me to update (it helps sometimes ;) ) I try to get back to everyone that messages me so please feel free. I love reading what you have to say... hit me up on tumblr diablovixen . tumblr . com. Enjoy!**

***/**

Shades of orange and red streaked across the horizon. The sun had become half of a bight orange orb falling just below the horizon. The rest of the sky, where night was taking over, was turning a shade of purple.

It was beautiful.

Well maybe it used to be. But now there were millions of those corpses roaming the earth underneath this beautiful sky. The beauty of this world didn't matter anymore, not really. Not when everyone was dead or dying or whatever they fuck they were when they still stood and still walked with the flesh peeling off their bones and their organs rotting inside them.

The world has ended. And it has ended with a fucking bang.

It's kind of poetic if you think about shit like that. Humans have spent their entire time on this planet at the very top of the food chain, we spend all of our energy eating everything, abusing everything and fucking everything up on this planet and it's come back to bite us in the ass.

Literally.

And now it was over, or for the most part it was over. There might even be a couple more patches of people like us, holding on for dear life, clinging to whatever resources we can find and hold up at some random ass fucking places delaying the enviable.

We were all going to die.

So what's the point? What's the point of me being here and prolonging the enviable especially for this band of fucking misfits. For the handicapped and the moronic. People more concerned about looking pretty then surviving.

Why would a fucking cripple wanted to go out on the streets with those things out there?

Even the fucking handi-cabable assholes that are here wanted nothing to do with going out there.

A bird glides across the distant sun and I don't really realize how foreign of an object it is until it draws my attention. I haven't heard a cricket chirp or a sparrow tweet since all this shit went down. I figured they took off, they hopped, they flew, they fucking ran until something ate them or they got as fucking far away as they could. Maybe the little fuckers were on an island somewhere watching all this shit unfold ready to comeback when we were nothing but rotted bones and harmless corpses.

But I've never seen a bird from Lima, Ohio glide like this black one.

"I knew I'd find you up here."

The voice is soft and barely above a whisper, but it doesn't matter I could pick that voice out of a crowd. For some reason I feel like that voice was always meant to find me, and always will.

I don't say anything to her. I can't. I know she kind of liked Artie, she spent a lot of time with him and I know I let her down just as much as I let him down.

"How are you?" She says.

I can feel her voice draw closer and I know she's taking tentative steps forward. I beg for her not to touch me. I'm not sure I can keep it together if she does. I can feel the scratchiness in the back of my throat and I have to clear my throat before I speak.

"How's Artie?" I counter because it doesn't really matter how I fucking feel, not when Artie is the one dying.

"He's okay." Brittany says.

I can hear her just over my shoulder now. I keep my eyes fixed on the spot in the sky where the bird disappeared behind the trees. I swallow the lump that seems logded in my throat. I feel so weak reacting this way. "He says there might be a chance that since his legs don't work anyway, maybe – maybe it won't affect him like everybody else."

I can hear the doubt in her voice and I know she doesn't believe it. I doubt Artie believes that either, just an ounce of false hope , he's giving the rest of them something `to hold onto. For some reason that makes it hurt even more.

"He wants to see you." She says.

I swallow another lump in my throat.

"That's good." I saw more harshly this time.

I hear the door squeak open. I wait for Brittany to say something. I wait for her to blame me or tell me I owe it to him but instead the door squeaks closed and I know Brittany's gone.

The sun is long gone and the rooftop is fucking freezing when I decide to finally come down back inside the mall.

I can see a little light coming from the gathering area around the fire pit Artie had built yesterday. Its strangely quiet, I try to tiptoe around them but I know I'm caught when I hear someone call my name.

I turn to see Puck making his way towards me. His eyes are red and there's a bottle in his hand. It looks like he was hiding some good shit from me.

I make a mental note to be pissed about it later.

He stumbles with each step he takes. He reaches up the hand holding the dark bottle. The liquid sloshes inside as he lifts his index finger off the bottle and points at me.

"You're just going to hide up there all day?" He snarls. Looking up towards the roof with his eyes, the movement causing him to stumble backwards a couple of steps.

"Artie knew what could happen when he-" I try to counter.

"He was saving your life!" Puck shouts. He throws the bottle I pull my head away and it smashes into a million pieces inches from my head. A spray of glass and whatever alcohol was left splashed against my neck and shoulder.

I can see the rest of the group rising from their spots around the fires. I see Quinn step out from the Sport Store where Artie had been staying with Puck. I'm guessing that's where he's resting now.

"You fucked up and you can't even look him in the eye?" Puck takes a threatening step forward. "What kind of leader are you?"

I can see Quinn march forward from the corner of my eye. She looks like the only person who might put effort into me not getting my ass kicked. I wish she wouldn't. I wave her off and take a step forward until I'm eye-to-eye with Puck. I can smell the stale bourbon on his breath.

"I never fucking asked for this." I say. I turn from Puck and look at the rest on them because I'm talking to them too. "I didn't want any of this fucking bullshit. So don't fucking look to me to save you. Artie fucking wanted to go. Artie fucking knew what could happen if he went. So don't you dare fucking blame me for this bullshit."

I pushed Puck off of me, he grabbed a trashcan before he falls on his ass. I step past him and look out at the rest of the group.

"Does anyone else have anything they'd like to say?" I said. The group looked at each other before one by one their eyes drifted towards the ground.

I marched my way into Mattressland and plopped down on the soft mattress. I didn't realize how tired I was until my head hit the pillow and I was instantly asleep.

I felt a familiar slender body pressed against me and I curled myself further into the warmth. I needed it. I needed it so badly.

Then I remembered all the reasons why I couldn't have it.

I pushed up from the bed and looked down at Brittany. Her long blonde hair was flowing over the pillow we had been sharing. She was wearing shorts and one of her long legs was poking out from the blanket that had been covering the both of us. She looked at peace. She looked comfortable and she looked absolutely beautiful.

I am usually a person who gets what they want. I'm not one for self-control especially when it comes to something like this. I see it. I want it. I have it. But this was so different. This was so much more than desire, this was about so much more than sex. I've never felt this way before. Maybe this stupid fucking end of the world was playing games with my head. Maybe it was making me want things I never wanted before.

I mean I was living in a fucking shopping mall with a bunch of people I would have terrorized in high school and never given the time of day otherwise.

A soft "hey" breaks me from my thoughts and I meet Brittany's blue eyes. She pushes herself up to a sitting position and wipes the sleep from her eyes and I realize I can see way too much of her in that loose tank top she's wearing.

"Do you always do that?" She says.

I look up and meet a pair of sleepy blue eyes.

"Do what?" I say coolly.

"Think so much?" She says. I watch as she stands to pull her shorts off and I gawk as she makes her way around the room until she bends down to grab a pair of sweatpants from the floor and slides them up her long slender legs.

I try to focus on something to say to counter her but I find myself at a lost for words.

There's a sad smile tugging at the corner of her lips when she looks back up at me. She grabs my wrist and my skin burns under her touch.

"Come on." She says before she pulls me outside the store.

She leads me to the sports store and my feet plant themselves just outside the door. I know where she's bringing me. I know who she wants me to see and I just can't do it. Puck was right. I want to hide on the rooftop all day. I can't look Artie in the eye.

"Stop that." Brittany says. She squeezes my wrist before she pulls me forward again.

"Artie wanted to talk to you before-" she trails off after she rounds the corner and stops dead in her tracks, I look down and see exactly why.

Artie, or at least what's left of Artie, is lying on the mattress spread out on the floor of the store. The only indication of the fact that he's alive is the rising and falling of his chest and even those movements are barely visible.

The skin of his knee, where the bite had been is almost completely rotted away, the stench that fills the store barrages my nostrils and I have to do everything to keep myself from gagging.

I step past Brittany and kneel down on Artie's side trying to keep my eyes focused on his face and not his leg and that horrid smell that radiates from it.

"It's not your fault." He breathes out.

I startle backwards for a second. I study his face again but his eyes are still closed the breaths he takes are more jagged now, he opens his mouth to speak again but it takes a few seconds for the words to leave his lips.

"People are going to look for someone to blame, for a reason to get mad but don't –" He's cut off by a gargled fit of coughs.

I pat him gently on his exposed arm, his skin is damp to the touch and burning hot at the same time. I look down and see the sheets around him soaked with sweat. I can see the way the brow of his squinted eyes shift as his head turns towards me.

"I fought, I really did, but -." He trails off.

A bead of water trickles down the side of his cheek and onto the already soaked sheets surrounding him.

"Are you a religious person?" Artie asks.

His eyes open just a little bit now and I can feel the heaviness of the question. I used to go to church everyday with my grandmother when I was little, I haven't gone back church since she's died but for some reason I feel like I have to give Artie the answer he needs. So I nod my head in affirmation.

Artie's face shifts to a pained smile.

"Where do you think the souls of the walking dead go?" He asks.

I look up to find those blue eyes staring down at me again. For some reason this answer feels like it means everything, Maybe the only thing we have to look forward to right now is what comes after this hell. I look back down at Artie.

"I think they're already long gone." I say. "Those are just flesh and bones walking out there. You, me and everyone else, we are much more than that. And whatever that is is safe –" I nod my head upwards where we've always been told heaven is supposed to be. "- before the bodies come back." I say.

Artie nods as he turns his face away from me. I'm not sure if he says anything else but I could swear I hear him whisper "good" before I rise back up to my feet.

"We'll let you rest, Artie." Brittany says before she pulls me away by the wrist.

"Quinn doesn't think he has much longer." She says when we finally leave the store. She pulls me towards where most of the group is gathered around the fire pit for breakfast. The smell of food churns my stomach.

"I didn't see how bad he'd gotten." Brittany says. I sit down on one of the chairs they set up around the pit and watch as Brittany grabs a bowl of whatever they tried to make today. She nods sadly at Sam and Mercedes who are chatting on the other side of the pit.

She hands me a bowl of oatmeal with a spoon stuck in it before she sits down next to me. I watch as she maneuvers the oatmeal around her bowl but makes no attempt to eat it.

I can't even look down at the warm bowl in my hand. I can't even think about food right now. Not after seeing Artie.

I think Brittany notices my hesitation, I can feel her eyes on me and I know she's about to say something but Quinn steps up and starts to speak instead.

"I think we need to get some rope." She says.

She shovels a spoonful of oatmeal into her mouth and looks at me for a response. I must be gawking at her like an idiot because she opens her mouth, still full of oatmeal and mumbles.

"To tie him up." She clarifies. I watch as she takes a big gulp and shovels the rest of the oatmeal in her mouth.

"We aren't tying him up." Puck sits down on Quinn's side. He won't even make eye contact with me, I'm not sure if it's because he's furious or because he feels guilty. I don't really care at the moment. I'm really just trying to focus on keeping the bile in my stomach down.

"We need to be realistic." Quinn says to Puck, she turns back to face me. "Are you going to eat that?" I look up to see her staring at my bowl. I shake my head and she grabs it from me and shovels another spoonful in her mouth.

"I mean if he turns in the middle of the night then he could bite someone else." She spits a little bit of oatmeal as she talks.

"He can't even fucking walk!" Puck rises to his feet ready to challenge Quinn.

Quinn doesn't seem phased in the slightest, she takes another bite of oatmeal and rises to her feet. She uses her free hand to shift her shirt to the side to reveal the machete hanging in the waistband of her cargo pants.

"Don't threaten me." She says. "He was gone the second he was bitten."

"Don't talk about him like that." Puck says. "He's still breathing and talking in the other room."

"Not for long." Quinn pushes her way past Puck and doesn't turn around as she makes her way towards the other side of the mall.

I can feel them staring at me, waiting for me to fix everything. I still don't know what they fucking expect from me.

The sun is in the middle of the sky. I can feel the heat of it on the back of my shoulders as I look down at the bodies in the parking lot. They haven't seen me, none of them seem to have any sense to look anywhere but directly in front of them. They just meander around the mall, some of them even walk off in the distance. I'm not really sure what they're doing, I doubt they do either, they don't seem to be in search of food, none of them seem to be going hungry, there's isn't enough out there for them to eat to sustain all of them anyway.

"So what the fuck are you doing?" I whisper to myself.

They just stumble around, some one two feet, some of the sides of ankles and others crawl on the ground their legs to far gone to walk. They aren't fast, this slow meandering is probably the fastest I've seen any of them walk but the true threat is in their numbers.

There's no way anyone could fend off this many of them, not before exhaustion got the better of them. And any asshole with a gun would run out of bullets long before they made a fucking dent. These things never get tired and their numbers never seem to thin.

It's the only advantages these walking corpses seem to have over us, I've never seen one of them tire out or stop to rest. They walk until they find something to devour and then they walk some more. There's no drive, there's no desire, there's no life in those eyes.

How do you stop something that has nothing to live for? How do you stop something that isn't living at all?

Brittany slides up next to me, leaning against the side of the roof. It doesn't startle me, I sensed her the second the door opened, I knew it was her by the way her feet scraped against the gravel. She had this graceful way of walking that only shifts the ground ever so slightly beneath her.

"Never seen anything like it." Brittany says.

I almost have to laugh at the ill-fated attempt at small talk. I never thought that the girl I couldn't get to speak before now won't shut the fuck up.

"What do you think it is?" She tries again.

I bite, because if I at least say something she won't have to keep fucking staring at me like that.

"Some sort of virus." I say because that's the only answer the news decided on before things went dark. There were a few other theories out there, chemical attack, a mutation of rabies. Some of the assholes at Fox News were calling it 'judgment day.'

There's still no real answer that would make sense of this fucking mess.

Brittany nods her head anyway.

"What does it matter?" I say.

Brittany's silent for a second, I glance over to see her looking at the walking bodies below us. "I guess if we knew what caused it we might be able to fight it better."

I scoff at that thought. "What's the point?" I say.

I can feel blue eyes watching me, studying me, I focus on a corpse in a tattered blue uniform as it stumbles towards the side of a abandoned truck.

"In knowing?" Brittany asks. I can feel her blue eyes watching my features and I feel like she can just reach in and read everything about me. I feel like she knows everything I'm not saying and that scares me more then anything.

"In fighting." I respond. I look back and lock onto the bright blue eyes. I see her features sadden and I instantly regret my response. She turns from me and looks back out. She isn't looking down in the corpses below us anymore, instead she's looking out towards the trees on the horizon.

"Hope." She says.

I look out at the trees that she's focusing on. A nice peace of beauty in this terrible fucked up world.

"I lost my mom and my litter sister." She says. "And for a split second I wanted to give up and let them take me too, but then I thought about my dad." I turn to her to see a renewed strength in those blue eyes.

I feel a lump catch in my throat. I turn from her and stare back out over the trees.

"I thought about what he would say if he knew I gave up. He's a police officer and when everything happened they called everyone in but before he left he promised that he would be back for us. He never breaks his promises and I know he was coming back for me, and I know he won't stop trying until he finds me." She says. "I have to stay alive for him."

I think back to the man that pulled me from the wrecked mustang. He must have just come off the highway when he found me. He was heading back to his family. The police officer with the beautiful blue eyes the same exact eyes that are staring back at me right now.

The police office who died saving my life was Brittany's father.


	17. Road (Part III)

I twirl the stained silver metal in my hand. I don't know why I never cleaned off the blood off the badge. I guess I should be more confused about why I still carried this creepy artifact around even when I knew I'd never really put effort into finding that poor bastard's wife and kids.

I never would have guessed that one of them would find me.

But now that everything has fallen right into my lap I can't even think about telling Brittany that her father was the police officer that pulled me from a car wreck minutes before I was about to be eaten alive. That her father practically gave his life to save me. That her father might be alive today if he wasn't so selfless to the point of idiocy. If he didn't stop to save someone he didn't even know, then maybe he would be coming back to her.

I know I'm too much of a fucking coward to do it. I know that I can never tell her. Maybe a part of me wants to convince myself that its for her own good. She's clinging to the hope that she's going to see her father again someday. It's not like I can just take the from her. She can keep on hoping she'll find him. It's something that will keep her moving forward. We all have some stupid sense of false hope they we're clinging onto.

Quinn, the army brat, still thinks we just need to hunker down until her father, the General, bring along the US Army and blasts away the evil flesh eating walking corpses. And she's convinced most of the group of this. Rachel has another theory that the virus or plague or whatever the fuck it is that's infecting everyone will just pass with time. I really hope she holds her breath for that one.

Sometimes I think it would be nice to have someone or something to hold onto when I can't sleep at night, but if I listen carefully enough I can still hear the strangled cries coming from Rachel's store or the screaming coming from Quinn's corner and I know that there's just a slight crack in their hope dam and some of the bad stuff has dripped through.

I can't even begin to imagine what would happen to them if that hope completely collapsed and they were flooded with feelings of reality.

Maybe people like them need those barriers to protect them from the monsters and the nightmares in the world. Maybe some people need the generals and the police officers and the knights in shinning armor to come sweep them away from the things that scare them. Maybe some people just aren't strong enough or maybe it isn't even strength that keeps this going. Maybe some of them are just too innocent for a world as harsh as this. Maybe they've been too sheltered and to protected to put up with the pain that this new world is filled with.

I guess this is the one time I can be thankful for such a shitty upbringing.

"Santana." Someone calls my name softly from over my shoulder.

I stuff the blood-stained badge back into my black knapsack before I turn around to find Quinn standing at the door. I can tell just by her demeanor that something isn't right.

"Artie." I realize almost immediately.

I can see her nod slowly. She leans her body against the wall and crosses her arms protectively.

"I think we have a few minutes before-" She pauses as she tries to find the right words for what we both know is about to happen. I guess she decided I can figure out what she means because she doesn't finish her sentence before she continue. "I just came to check to see if you wanted me to take care of it or-" She pauses again.

I stick my hand back inside the black knapsack, instead of the badge I pull out the police issue pistol that Brittany's father had given me that day at the gas station. The same one I used to kill him before he turned. I rise to my feet and turn to face Quinn.

"I can handle it." I say. Quinn's still leaning against the wall as I hurry past her.

I don't know how long it takes for the change to happen. I've never watched it happen and I've never waited around a dead body long enough to see the change. But I have to do it before the change happens to Artie, for some reason that seems so important to me.

I pass by the group gathered around the fire pit Artie build for us. I feel myself fighting tears for someone I barely know. He might not have been the strongest, physically, in this fucking band of misfits but he was one of the most useful members and by far the smartest. I don't really know how we're going to survive without his ingenuity. Then again I didn't know how I'd survive without whiskey on the rocks and chocolate milkshakes. But I've somehow managed to survive.

I guess we'll just have to fucking get by.

"Santana." Brittany's calling to me. I don't look at her.

I haven't been able to look at her since I figured out the truth about her father earlier today on the roof. I know she can sense something is up but she doesn't push it. She doesn't ask questions. She just follows me as I make my way to the sports store. It had been Artie's home, but now it was his mausoleum.

And I had to make sure it stayed that way.

"Is Artie-?"" She starts.

I sure she spots the gun in my hand because she follows up with a quick "Oh" a few moments later.

I'm happy that Brittany and Quinn both stop at the door and don't follow me in past the hanging curtains and sheets that Artie had Puck help him put up for privacy. I think for a second that maybe Puck would like to be here. That maybe Puck would like to say one last goodbye. But I don't think I'd have the time to find his drunk ass. Not if I want Artie to die a man.

I find him laying in the same spot he'd been in when I saw him earlier. His skin is so pale, as if his life had been slowly sucked out of him and I guess it was. What the fuck is this thing and what does it do to people? I wish we got more answers before the world had gotten dark. I wish we could know that to expect for ourselves.

I find a pillow on floor next to Artie's bed. I can use it to muffle the sound even though I'm pretty sure everyone is now standing at the door waiting for the sure sounds of gunshots but for some reason I feel like I need to hide the sound.

Maybe if it doesn't sound like a gunshot I can pretend like I'm not shooting another human being.

"I'm sorry." I whisper to Artie before I place the pillow gently over his head. I raise the pistol and close my eyes before I pull the trigger.

Even with the sound hindered by the cotton it still makes my ears ring and my stomach quiver. The kickback of the gun in my hand and its so obvious that the pillow does nothing to shield the reality from me.

Artie is dead.

And he isn't coming back. Even though he had gotten a death sentence when he was bit I guess I still clung to hope that something would save him. That I would wake up from this nightmare and this fucking disaster would be over.

I thought I was smarter than that.

The gun hangs at my side as I slide past the group gathered outside the door of the sports store. It's like the didn't fucking expect this to happen. It's like death isn't real to them even when they look outside and see it literally marching around the fucking parking lot.

We're all going to fucking die and when we run out of assholes with bullets to put us down then we're going to get right back up again and stumble around until we find some other poor motherfucker to bite.

Someone was missing from the group gathered around the door but I knew exactly where to find that dumb fuck. And sure as hell I can hear the crumpling of plastic as I approach the pharmacy.

I slip under the gate and find Puck kneeling behind the counter. I know exactly what he's searching for. They kept the good shit there, locked away from the thieving hands of the junkies.

"Run out of booze?" I say.

I must of startled him because he stumbles backwards and crushes a bit as a shelve filled with pill bottles falls to the floor. He's slow to his feet and even when he gets there he seems to waiver a bit.

"Artie's dead." I say.

He turns from me, probably before I could see his reaction. "I guessed that from the gunshot and all." He pulls a bottle closer to his face and squints as he tries to read the label.

I hear the clatter of metal against tile as I drop the gun to the floor. I round the corner of the pharmacy counter and pull on Puck's shirt until he's forced to turn and look at me.

"What?" He growls.

My lips connect with his. I can taste the alcohol on his breath. Its more than bourbon now. I'm guessing from the variety and strength of the tastes that he's been drinking whatever he could get his hands on and he's been doing it all night.

He's slow to react. I'm not sure if it's the shock or the alcohol that delays him but soon he's deepening the kiss. His right hand grabs a fistful of my hair and his left pulls me closer as his tongue forces its way into my mouth. I can feel sharp pains on my scalp as his fists tighten against my hair.

It's hurts.

And it's everything I need.

He pulls my shirt up over my head before he goes in an touches soft kisses to the top of my breast.

"What the fuck are you doing?" I whisper.

I can feel him look up at me. I can just imagine those bloodshot puppy dog eyes but I don't look down at him, instead I stare straight across the store and lock my eyes on an undisturbed bottle of yellow pills on the shelf.

"Harder." I say.

Puck pauses for a moment and for a second, I fear that he isn't going to give me what I want. But then he bows his head back down and I can feel his teeth as he bites down at the skin of my collar bone. My back instinctively arches against the pain and the pleasure I feel. I want neither but crave both. I push down at his head begging him the silent command and he obliges and bites down even harder at the top of my breast.

I dig my nails into the back of his skull every time he attempts a soft kiss or caress, and he rewards me with a harsh bite. The pattern continues as he pulls my jeans and underwear down my legs in one swift motion.

He doesn't bother with my boots and socks and everything pools around my ankles. I watch him as he takes a step backward and disappears down one of the aisles. I step out of my boots and pants as I hear him fiddling with the belt of his jeans. He returns a few seconds later with a purple square package between his teeth. When he returns he stands in front of me breathing just as hard as I can feel myself breathing. We lock eyes for a second.

"I don't think we should." He mumbles. The condom still sits in the wrapper between his teeth.

I scoff and lock eyes with him. "You really are so useless. I don't know why I thought you could ever protect your friend. You can't even give a chick a good fuck when she wants it." I reach down to grab my pants when my back slams against the shelves on the wall behind me.

I look up to see a new fire in Puck's eyes. He pulls his pants low enough to roll the condom up over his dick. He inches in closer to me. I can feel his hot alcohol laced breath against my neck and the lubricant on the condom rubs up against my thigh.

I forgot how much I hated this.

He bites down harder against my neck as he lifts me hards by the hips and slams me against the shelves the line the wall. I can feel one shelf digging into my shoulder and another digging into my lower back. It hurts. Just the way I need it to hurt. But this pain doesn't compare to the pain I feel when he trusts inside me.

His teeth grip another part of my shoulder so hard I feel like I know he's soon to draw blood. My muscles and bones scream with every thrust into the shelving unit. But I don't ask him to stop. I don't want him to stop. I need this. I want this.

I deserve this.

And Puck knows it. Puck has to know it. Everyone knows this.

And soon Brittany's going to know it.

The thrusting seems to go on forever yet not end soon enough. His I can feel his body weaken as he reaches orgasm. His hands grip around me tighter but his strength weakens as his body convulses and he lets out a satiated breath.

He takes a step backward. His hands withdrawn from my hips and my weakened, battered body can do nothing but crumple to the ground.

"Santana?" He's kneeling in front of me, his jeans still pooled around his ankles. A caring hand touches my bruised shoulder. "Are you okay?"

I push his hand off my shoulder as soon as I muster the energy. "Get out of here."

"At least let me take you back to your bed." He's wrapping his arm around my shoulders preparing to lift me to my feet.

I don't think I could stand, even if I tried and I don't want anyone to help me.

I don't deserve that.

"Get the fuck off me and get the fuck out of here." I say. "You were nothing but a good fuck, don't start playing the fucking boyfriend shit with me."

Puck is already on his feet and pulling up his pants. He scampers out of the pharmacy like a wounded deer.

I place my head against the cool tile. I curl into myself and I feel my body finally succumb to the exhaustion.

**/* Author's Note: Trying to get back into finishing this up. It's been hard to keep up with anything Glee related recently. You all probably know why but Thanks to all that read, Review and Update. Check me out on Tumblr and let me know what you think! */**


	18. The Beginning of The End (Part I)

I was awoken by a loud thump, like someone was dropping a bag of rocks onto the floor next to me.

My muscles ached and my back throbbed. It took a few moments for my mind to processs what I had done last night.

After having sex with Puck. I had fallen asleep on the cold tile of the pharmacy floor.

But where I was now didn't feel like tile. I was in a bed, covered in blankets that I don't ever remember pulling over myself.

There was another thump that echoed around the room. Brittany was usually the first one awake. She was definitely more of a morning person then I could ever be. But she never made this much noise in the morning. Come to think of it, she never even got out of bed before I was awake. I'd always wake up to alert blue eyes and a smile. But I rubbed the blankets next to me.

And found it empty.

That wasn't the only thing that was different. The blankets and sheets I were in felt nothing like the ones Brittany had originally picked out for our bed over in Mattressland. Everything felt rougher against my skin.

This wasn't our bed.

I opened my eyes. There was a harsh light peaking in through the dark privacy curtains surrounding the bed. I sat up slowly, my muscles rewarded me for the night of abuse and I couldn't help the little groan of pain that escaped my lips. I tried to rub the sleep and shame out of my eyes.

There was another, louder thump this time. I could hear the whoosh of the fabric and I sensed someone was standing at the foot of the bed.

I looked up slowly.

The figure had blonde hair but it was cut in a bob, way too short to be the girl I had gotten so used to waking up next to.

"It's about time you got the hell up." Quinn said. She crossed her arms in front of her chest. "This isn't a God damn bed and breakfast."

I sighed. I rested my head in my hands. One the last things I wanted to wake up to was a scolding from Sargent Quinn.

"Would never have guessed that." I flipped my legs over the side of the bed, my muscles still screaming. "These sandpaper fabrics you cover your bed with are so fucking comfortable."

I flipped back the olive green blanket, relieved to see myself wearing sweatpants. These definitely weren't mine. Come to think of it, this T-shirt wasn't mine either. I'm not very much an earth tone type of girl but guessing by the color choice these were probably similar colors to the army issue Sargent Quinn was so used to. Quinn must have found me in the pharmacy. That would explain why she's wearing her extra super duper bitch face today. I stood up, preparing to barrel past Quinn and out of the store but she was already past me, fixing the blankets that I had disturbed during the night.

"We all heard you guys. You know." Quinn said just as I had reached the separation in fabric.

I stopped dead in my tracks.

"What?" I turned to face Quinn but she wasn't looking at me. She was still too busy making her bed, rubbing out all creases with the palm of her hand. It was the first time I'd ever seen her do anything gently.

"You and Puck. You weren't exactly quiet you know. Everyone heard you." She looked up from the bed, probably satisfied with her perfection. "Include Brittany"

Brittany knew.

I could see the front doors of the store through the crack in the fabric. My escape was so close. But I didn't have anything to escape to. Not if Brittany heard.

But maybe she didn't care.

Why should she?

Why do I?

I cross my arms in front of my chest and narrowed my eyes. I hoped Quinn hadn't seen the reaction on my face but I knew she did. She stood up straight and looked over me with a sad, knowing smile on her face.

"My father had always told me that there were always so many different types of grieving soldiers. When they lost a squad mate, a friend or a commander there were always different ways the soldiers handled it. But can you guess which type of soldier my dad was the most afraid of?"

She paused and looked up at me for a quick second as if she was expecting an answer.

"The internalizer." She answered finally. She brushed past me and outside the fabric privacy curtain as she kept talking. "It never made him nervous when they were drinking, or fighting, or screaming or crying. Those things are kind of normal. "

I followed Quinn as she began rearranging items on a table. It looked like she was putting together an armory. The table was covered with knives and the couple of guns they had on them when they arrived here. She also had the ammo laid across the table showing how very little bullets they had left.

"But the internalizer." She arranged some more items on the table. "That soldier never grieved. At first, to the inexperienced commanders, it seemed that the internalizer was one of the best soldiers. That the soldier was dealing with the pain 'like a man' should."

She let out a dark laugh.

"But he wasn't. He wasn't dealing with the pain of losing his friends, he was burying it. 'Being too strong to show weakness is not a strength' as my father would always say. Those were always the soldiers that would get careless about themselves and about others. Drive a Humvee over a bridge that hadn't been cleared of IEDs, or lift their head just little too high out of cover in an area known for sniper activity. He always knew that if one solider was being sent home in a body bag, three or four others were soon to follow. Because internalizers never lasted very long on the battlefield."

Quinn's green eyes locked onto mine.

"You're an internalizer, Santana." She looked back down at the table and picked up a bow from the table and gave the string a quick flick with her fingers as if testing its strength. "And if you don't get your shit together soon. You're going to be laying next to Artie. And even worse, it could be someone like Brittany laying right next to you."

* * *

><p>I could feel everyone watching me as a marched past them, headed directly for Mattressland. I didn't see the wave of blonde hair in the group. Of course I didn't. For some reason I knew she wouldn't be here. I know she wouldn't want to risk a chance of seeing me here.<p>

Not after last night.

Someone jumped in front of me. I looked up to see Puck. His eyes were watery and bloodshot. I wasn't sure if it was from the hangover he had to so obviously be feeling or if he was still crying over Artie. I glanced over at the sports store. We hadn't even decided what to do with Artie's body yet and everything was already such a mess.

"I wouldn't go in there." He said.

I tried to step past him but he jumped in front of me and grabbed my shoulders.

I shrugged him off.

"No really." He turned to look over at the entrance to Mattressland. That's when I saw the reddening mark on his cheek.

"What happened to you-" I started.

"I tried to go in there this morning." Puck said. He turned his face from me to hide the mark Brittany had left across his cheek. I looked back over at the store.

I had to see her. I just had to make this better.

I couldn't live with this feeling of shame inside me.

Not if I could never see those caring blue eyes again.

I pushed past Puck and made my way towards the entrance. But Brittany had stepped out into view before I managed to get within ten feet of the door.

Her eyes were red from crying. I could see tears still streaking down her cheek.

She was crying over me. I wish I could convince her that I was never someone worth crying over.

I wish I could be.

I opened my mouth to say something that could make this right. That could make this better. But there wasn't anything there to be said. I had hurt her. And I had known that it would.

And that isn't even the worst of the things I had done. The things I could do.

Why couldn't Brittany see that?

Well I guess she finally has. I can see the change in her eyes already when she looks at me. Those caring blue eyes have narrowed. There is a crease across her forehead. I know its supposed to look intimating. I know that she's supposed to seem angry. But I see nothing but pain, nothing but hurt.

And for some reason that makes it feel worse.

I didn't notice the pile of things in her hand. The dark fabrics hint that they are my clothes. The ones I kept in the messy pile that Brittany had always cleaned up and folded for me even when I asked her not to. I didn't want her doing me any favors.

But she did them anyway.

But now her perfect folds are ruined as the lay crumpled in her hands. She takes another sniff and drops them at my feet. She doesn't look at me as she disappears into the store again to get more of my things to throw at me.

I stand there and wait for her to return.

I guess I didn't acquire as much stuff as I had thought during our short time here at the mall because her hands are mostly empty when she comes back with nothing but a black backpack. The same backpack I had kept hidden underneath the bed. She must have seen it one day when she was cleaning up or searching for more dark clothes that had missed the messy pile.

Her hands gain momentum before she tosses it to the side so that it lands on the empty tile to me left and slides across the floor. The contents spill out across the floor. Two energy bars roll across, followed by a small first aid kit that bursts open spilling bandaids and antiseptic wipes across the floor. There is a clink as a small sliver piece of metal tumbles across the floor. I see flashes of silver and the deep red until it comes to a stop face up across the floor.

I want to run to it. To snatch it up before Brittany has a chance to read the name on the badge but my feet are rooted to the spot. My body is too frozen, too shocked, too overwhelmed to move. I looked up to find Brittany's eyes fixated on the badge. Those six damning letters shinning through the dried blood I had refused to clean off.

"Where did you get that?" She's already running towards it and kneeling down to pick it up before I can even manage to take a step.

A step is all I can bring myself to take before she's rising up to her feet again and backing up towards the entrance of Mattressland. She walks backwards, watching me.

I don't dare move. I don't know why I think that freezing in place with protect me from what's about to happen.

Nothing will.

"This is my dad's." I can see the tears already threatening in her eyes. She swallows and I can see a wave in her throat as she tries to bury the emotion she feels as I know she knows what it means. The badge in my possession and spots of blood that cover it. She knows it can only mean one thing but still she refuses to cry over that knowledge. She refuses to acknowledge that its real.

She tries to hide the tears for someone so deserving of them.

The world is such a confusing fucked up place.

I wish I wasn't the one to show Brittany how truly fucked up it really was.

"He gave it to me." I finally manage to choke out. My voice sounds a lot weaker then I meant it to be. But it isn't fair. I have no right to be weak in front of Brittany. I have no right to make her feel any ounce of sympathy for me.

She never should have had any. I swallow it all, the tears that threaten, the lump in the back of my throat and I stand up straighter. She deserves to know. She deserved to know a long time ago.

"Before he-"

She holds her hand up to stop me. She knows. I can tell by the way she studies the badge like an artifact. The way her hands trace the corners and the decoration like it is the most important thing in the world to her right now.

And it should be.

"I was- driving too fast and I crashed my car." I pause and wait for Brittany to stop me from speaking again. But she doesn't this time. "I'm not sure how much time had passed before he found me." Brittany doesn't look up from the badge in her hand but her fingers have stopped tracing the markings. "He saved my life. There was a horde of them coming from both directions. We tried to drive though but-"

Her eyes close tightly. A lone tear trickles out.

"You hid this from me!" Her eyes burst open as she shouts at me. That anger is back again and for some reason it makes me feel better.

Even though I don't deserve to.

"I-" I have no defense. I have nothing to counter it. "I did."

"How could you?" Her voice is laced with a venom I never thought I could hear come from Brittany's mouth. Dear, sweet Brittany. She could have been my Brittany. If I just let her be.

Why am I always doing such stupid things?

"Brittany I-" I take a step forward but she instantly jumps backwards, increasing the distance between us.

"Don't!" She shouts. She looks down at the badge again and takes a breath before her eyes lock onto mine. Her shoulders drop but her voice softens as she speaks again. "Please, just don't"

It feels like everything inside of me is breaking into a million pieces. I can sense the anguish in her voice and there's nothing I can do to fix it. There's nothing I can do to make it better because I am the cause of it.

I never wanted to have that much power over anyone.

Not someone like Brittany.

Never someone like Brittany.

"Okay." I say. I take several steps backwards giving her as much space as she needs.

Anything for her.

She turns her back towards me and heads back inside the store.

"He died a man." I shout to her just before she disappears. She doesn't turn around but she stops her retreat. "I don't know if that makes me a murderer but-" I can see a slight turn of her head as she listens for the rest. "-but it was important to him. I think it'd be important to him that you know that. He died a hero, and he stayed that way."

I swear I can see her lips move ever so slightly. The sound is barely a whisper when it reaches me. I can't tell if its wishful thinking but I would have sworn that she said "thank you." Before she disappeared into the store.

**/* Author's Note: Sorry about the lack of triggers for last chapter. I hope I didn't upset too many people. I did say that there was sexual themes in the description. I also wanted to remind you guys that this story is rated M. And just to remind you guys, stories have characters that are just as human as you and me and sometimes they do stupid things that you might not agree with. I hope you can still find a way to love them. */**


	19. The Beginning of The End (Part II)

The morning air had a crisp yet cold bite to it. A sign that the cold weather was going to start to roll in. I watched the mindless bodies as the walked their way around the parking lot below. They seemed to just walk in circles, no plan, no drive. They were just waiting for their next meal to make a sound or do anything to attract their attention.

They never strayed too fair from the mall, that's one thing I was certain about. I wasn't sure how good their hearing was, I guess they never fucking thought to teach undead hearing in biology class.

Go fucking figure.

Quinn was pretty fucking anal about keeping noise to a minimum but still something kept them here.

Waiting.

* * *

><p>In the few times that my father and I actually tried to engage in father-daughter activities he had taken me fishing on the shores of this shitty smelly pond near our house. It just showed how little we had in fucking common. There weren't many ten year old girls who'd enjoy fishing. And I was far from one of them.<p>

I had gotten bored fairly quickly and instead took to running up and down alongside the water trying to catch a glimpse of the fish that had seemed to be taking too long to catch. My dad grabbed me by the collar of the shirt and pulled me down. I let out a little yelp as my butt hit the rocks that lined the shore.

"You're scaring the fish." He snarled. He reeled in his line again, checking to make sure the now soggy lifeless worm was still at the end of it.

"I'm not in the water." Ten-year-old me countered. I had felt like another reason I was a disappointment to my dad and I didn't even know why.

"They can feel the vibrations of you running like a manic back and forth." He said. "Just sit there patiently or we'll never catch anything."

That was the last father-daughter outing we ever attempted.

* * *

><p>The gravel on the roof rumbled, the little pebbles jumped around my feet. I looked up on the horizon and saw a sea of green camo. It was a caravan. Military caravan. I counted five vehicles kicking up dust as they headed down the road leading towards the mall. At the front of the pack was a large tank with a dozer blade attached to its front. It obliterated anything in its path, corpses, cars, debris. Nothing was stopping this group from getting where it needed to go.<p>

The door to the roof burst open and I heard the rest of the group scamper to the edges on either side of me. I could see Quinn's face light up as the vehicles got closer.

"They found us." She said. She was practically jumping for fucking joy.

I could see Brittany at the far end of the group, keeping as much distance between me and her as I imagine she could. Her eyes trying too hard to fixate on the caravan. But I knew she was just trying to keep them away from me.

And I didn't blame her.

"They aren't slowing down." Finn said.

I looked back down at the caravan they were now in the parking lot, and heading straight for the mall entrance but Finn was right. They were going to barrel right through the main entrance.

"What the fuck are they doing?" I cursed.

"Does it matter?" Quinn said. She was practically jumping for joy like a child on christmas morning. "They probably have bases set up with ten times the security that we had here. We don't need to keep this place secure anymore."

"It just seems a little-"

The entire building shook violently. I felt the roof lurch forward as the tank ripped through the mall entrance. There was the smashing of metal and the shattering of glass as it pushed its way forward.

I leaned my head farther over the roof to get a good view of the soldiers exiting the vehicle. All where dressed in black fatigues. They all carried large rifles. I'm sure Quinn could have told me the make and model and even the fucking serial numbers if I asked. They probably were standard issue for wherever the fuck they were from. My eyes fell to a large white symbol printed on a patch on every soldiers right arm. It was three spirals connected in the middle by a triangle. I had never seem that symbol before.

"Where are they from?" I looked to Quinn for an answer.

"No division of the military that I'm familiar-." Quinn abruptly stopped talking. I could hear a twinge in her voice.

I followed her eyes down to a large stout man. He walked much slower then the rest of them and even from all the way up here I could hear him barking orders to the soldiers around him. And somewhere in the sea of commands I heard the word "roof."

"Quinn?" Rachel did nothing to disguise the fear in her voice.

But Quinn didn't answer. Her fingers tightened so hard around the edge of the roof that I could see her knuckles turning white. There was something about this group that Quinn wasn't telling us.

The there was an echo in the stairway. Boots meeting stairs. The echo increased in volume and occurrence as the sounds drew closer.

"Block the doors." Finn and Puck both jumped forward ready to defend the access to the roof.

"Don't bother." I said. Quinn was still watching the spot where the stout man had been but he had long since disappeared into the gaping hole that was the entrance to the mall.

Both Puck and Finn turned to look at me, like I had all the fucking answers. "They have a fucking tank, they have fucking machine guns. And they just ripped a hole through our wall. If they want to get through that door, or get US down from here. Then they're going to fucking do it. You might as well save your energy."

They hesitantly backed away from the roof entrance just as the first soldier burst through the door. He was even more intimating then he was down below. He didn't make eye contact with any of us. There was no smile on his face, no "I'm happy to be liberating you" greeting, just the barrel of a rifle pointed at our faces.

He was followed by a dozen more soldiers. Each lined up six to a side with a gap in the middle. Each pointing the barrel of his gun at us.

It was pure and utter terrifying silence until the stout man pushed his way through the door and stepped into the gap the soldiers had left from him. He wasn't as fit as the rest of the soldiers but he still looked more important. There were these badges or medals or whatever the fuck you call them on front of his uniform, he even carried himself with this "I'm more important than you stature". And he only carried a pistol attached to his hip. For some reason I always thought the more important officers had gotten smaller and smaller weapons. I guess you stopped needing a gun when you were barking orders from behind the front lines. He placed his hand on the holder of his pistol and scanned the group.

And then he froze.

"Quinn." He said. His voice wavered just a bit as he broke his official character ever so slightly.

Quinn shifted instantly from her spot. "Dad?!" She took a step forwards, every soldier on the line turned his weapon towards her.

"General?" One of the soldiers said. I didn't have enough time to locate the source of the question.

Quinn froze and drifted backwards from the aiming soldiers. "What's going on?"

"I'm sorry." He cleared his throat and lifted his head up before he spoke again. "Unfortunately orders are orders and room is already tight back at the base. We can't take on anymore civilians. Orders are to only take what we need."

I couldn't help the scoff that left my lips. The General's eyes drifted towards me. "So you tear down our fucking walls just so you can steal some of our fucking shit and take off?"

"We aren't here for supplies." For some reason the smile the crossed the General's lips was a bit unsettling.

I could feel goosebumps building on my arms.

"Then what do you want?" Puck took a step forward and the guns turned to his direction.

The General glanced around the rest of the group, his eyes resting on Brittany for a second too long before he turned back to look at Quinn.

"There's a group of doctors." His voice almost sounds like he was trying to justify his actions. "They seem to think they're at the break of a cure, or a vaccine at least." He started pacing in front of his soldiers. "But we have to make some sacrifices to get there. They need some...subjects."

"No fucking way!" I could feel the General's eyes lock onto me. "You aren't taking us to be your fucking science experiments. If you're so willing to make sacrifices then why don't you fucking volunteer."

He let out a sigh. "I would if I could." He said. "But it isn't that easy. There's a certain...type of person that the doctors need."

His eyes drifted over to Brittany again. I was running over to her, standing in front of her before my brain could even process his words and his wandering eyes.

"It's a little above my pay grade." He said. "But there's something about the blonde haired and blue eyed. Recessive genes and all crap." He waved his hand around his head like it was all crap to him anyway.

"No." I said. I adjusted my feet and stood ready to fight.

The General looked at the soldier to his left. He slipped the strap of his rifle over his shoulder and started walking towards me. I took a step to face him. I could take this guy. I know I could. But I was more worried about his eleven other friends and their plethora of bullets.

"Where would you take me?" I heard Brittany ask from over my shoulder.

The soldier stopped, he shot a perplexed look back at the General who only just smiled his creepy little smile.

"I'm not at liberty to say." He said.

There was a pause. No one moved and no one said anything, everyone was just waiting for the other to make a move first.

"What will they do to me?" Brittany asked.

"Blood samples, tests." The General responded a little too quickly. "It's just like going to the doctor."

His smile grew wider. He was too confident. He was too well practiced in this conversation. It all felt so rehearsed.

The soldier made a move forward, I turned to stop his movement.

"I'll go with you." Brittany said.

I was the one who stopped this time. Brittany was already trying to brush past me when I turned to grab her elbow.

"You can't." I said. I could feel the tears threatening in my eyes.

"You heard him." She whispered even though she really didn't have to. "It could fix people, if it could help people. I have to go. My dad would have wanted me to."

"He's lying, Britt." I said. I didn't stop the tears from falling this time. "I know he is. It isn't just going to be like giving blood."

I could see it in her eyes. I know she didn't believe him either but she still ripped her elbow from my arm and walked up to the General. He put an arm over her shoulder and led her towards the stairs.

I wanted to reach out for her. I wanted to stop her. But I couldn't move. I just fucking froze there again. My entire body was absolutely fucking useless to me.

I was fucking useless.

I watched as the soldiers followed the General down the stairs. I closed my eyes and heard the echo of boots. And I watched over the roof as the General held the door open for Brittany. I watched as she slipped in side of the Humvee and I watched the dust kick up behind the vehicles as Brittany disappeared from my life forever.


	20. The Road (Part I)

I refused to look away from the horizon. Not as long as I thought I could still hear the grumble of the engines in the distance, not as long as I could still see the dust kicked up from the fleeting tires settle back onto the pavement below. Not as long as she was still gone.

Nothing seemed to make sense. The army was there to protect us, but instead they slammed a hole through our front door and left us here to die.

What did they want with Brittany anyway?

And Quinn's dad.

He just left her here too.

I looked to my side to see dirty work boots then brown cargo pants, my eyes made it up towards the figure's ratty black t-shirt until I saw a mouth moving up and down.

My eyes took in the short blond hair, before they shot back down to those lips. They continued to move up and down but no sound hit my ears. I felt two weights on my shoulder.

The touch jolted me back to reality. The cloud over my eyes and ears lifted and I finally looked back into Quinn's concerned green eyes.

It was like someone had lifted up the lid of Pandora's box and the scene around me erupted in sounds I could only describe as pure and utter chaos.

"For fuck's sake, Quinn!" I heard Puck shout.

I turned over my shoulder to see Puck and Sam leaned against the door that lead back into the mall. They were angled against it and pushing back the bodies that must have already made it through the mall and up the stairwell. Finn was leaning with both arms pressed against the door and pushing back with every slam that came as another moving corpse pushed its way to the top of the stairs.

_Fuck how much time had already passed?_

I felt a squeeze on my shoulder and turned my attention back to Quinn.

"One step at a time." She whispered so that only I could hear. "We need to get off this roof first. And then we find her."

I swallowed against the lump in my throat.

Had it been that obvious?

There was a slam and the sound of wood cracking. I turned my attention back towards the door and saw a decaying hand pushing its way through a splintering hole, the hand reached blindly until it grabbed at one of Finn's arms. He jumped backwards and the door started to give way.

"Quinn!" Pucked called again. "Finn get your ass back on this door!"

Finn jumped up against the door but it barely pushed back against the growing horde. They moaned in anticipation seeming to sense that they were another step closer to a meal.

_Fuck._

I scrambled to the front of the mall. The dumpster and truck would be a great escape route back down. But it was useless. The horde was crawling, stumbling and marching towards the front of the mall. We would have been overcome the second we stepped foot on the ground.

"Fuck." Quinn said from over my shoulder. "Maybe the back? Where the loading docks are?"

I shook my head. "The fall is too high. We'd break our legs at the very least."

Quinn slammed her hands on the ledge. "Fuck!"

There was another smashing sound and we both looked over to see a second hand pushing its way through the door. It grabbed wildly at the air.

"Any help would be wonderful ladies." Puck said just before he slammed his shoulder further against the door. It didn't budge.

Mercedes, Rachel and Kurt came running to door smashing the dead and skinless arms with weapons they must have found lying on the rooftop. Rachel and Mercedes were wielding 2x4's while Kurt swung the golf club Puck had left up here for his daily "driving range target practice".

"We need to think of something." Quinn said. I looked over to see her eyes frantically searching the rooftop. "And we need to think of it fast."

I found myself searching to rooftop as well. Like a ladder would magically appear out of thin air. There was nothing up here, just some sheets of wood Puck had hoisted up here in his insistance that building a cabana would be "a step towards a normal life."

Then my eyes landed on the rope we had been using to pull the supplies up through the skylights. It was a rather clever method developed by our late genius Artie. He suggested using teams to hoist up heavier woods and metals instead of trying to drag it up the narrow staircase. There was still a heavy climbing rope attached to the sheet of wood we had hoisted up a couple of days ago.

I slapped Quinn on the arm and pointed to the rope. We untied it and brought it to the back side of the roof.

"Here." She said as she looped her end of the rope around a thick pipe near the ledge. I looked over the edge saw the back lot completely empty, all the other stupid dead fuckers were rounding the mall to get into the front entrance.

"Go." I said to her.

She grabbed the roped in her hands and climbed to the top of the ledge. She pulled against the rope a couple of times to test its strength before she dropped down to the wall.

"Let's fucking go guys!" I called over my shoulder.

I didn't have to look over my shoulder before Kurt and Rachel were at my side.

"Down the rope." I instructed to them. Pointing over the ledge to Quinn who was already at the bottom and giving us a thumbs up.

Rachel gripped the roped and started her slow and painful decent.

"For fuck's sake Rachel, you have to move faster than that!" I hissed down to her. Her pace seemed to increase ever so slightly until Quinn practically pulled her off the rope and let her fall the last couple of feet.

Kurt was already around the ledge and making his way down before I turned to call for Finn.

Finn, then Mercedes all made it down before I turned back to Sam and Puck who were struggling against the door. It was starting to bow around the edges and it was obvious they were fighting a losing battle. I ran over and used whatever strength I had left to push up against the door.

"Go." I said to Sam when our eyes met.

His brow furrowed for a second and then something in his eyes lightened. "You and Puck should go." He said. "I'm stronger. I can hold it for you guys."

"No way." Puck called over the groans of the undead. "I'm def stronger then you."

Sam scoffed.

"Oh for fuck's sake guys." I said. I turned and pushed my back up against the door, using my legs for leverage. "This really isn't the time for a dick measuring contest."

"Then just go!" Sam yelled.

The door gave away just an inch before we managed to pushed back against it.

"Now!" Sam grunted against the strain.

I locked eyes with Sam. He forced a smile.

I pulled Puck off the door and we sprinted towards the rope. I pushed Puck towards it first. He climbed over, looked over at Sam and the door one last time before made his descent down to Quinn and the others.

I glanced over my shoulder. The door was completely off the hinge now. The undead bodies were starting to push Sam back inch my inch. I could hear his feet digging against the gravel trying to push back but it wasn't working. I second later Sam and the door tumbled forwards. The wood of the door pinning Sam to the roof as the wave of bodies collapsed onto him.

There was all too familar crunch of teeth meeting bone and a blood-curtling scream.

I heard someone scream my name from the ground below. I gave them a quick glance before I turned back towards the scene at the door.

One body in the growing pile looked up at me. It's eyes were black and empty. There was nothing inside of there but I knew it could see me. I knew because it rose to its feet and started scrambling over the others as it limped closer. I climbed onto the ledge and tested the rope one more time before I scambled down the wall.

The fibers dug into my palms but I didn't care. I barely felt it.. I just needed to get away from that smell, to get away from the screaming and to get away from those eyes.

Once my feet hit the ground I started running.

And I didn't stop.

Not until I felt Puck pull at my arm and bring me to a stop did I realize how much distance I hat put between ourselves and the place we had called our home.

Mercedes fell to the ground and put her head between her legs, Puck sat down beside me. I could feel his eyes locked onto me but I ignored him as I looked back at the mall in the distance.

"Sam." Rachel finally managed between breaths.

All eyes fell on me and I shook my head. "If it wasn't for him..." I gestured between Puck and myself.

"I liked him." Quinn said. She straightened herself up and stood proudly.

"You barely knew him." Mercedes said. There was a touch of something in her voice that I couldn't quite place.

"And he barely knew us." Puck said. "But he helped us anyway." I nodded.

The group grew quiet but the air was heavy with the things left unsaid. Sam had died saving people he barely knew for reasons I couldn't explain. Maybe he was just one of those types of people. Those selfless ones. The ones I thought this world wasn't made for.

I turned my back before the group could see the tears threatening in my eyes.

We walked silently, whether I wanted my legs to or not, they had led me down the path left by the convoy that had taken Brittany. We had no where else to go and I had to find her. It went against my basic survial plan. It was the thing I had told myself not to do. Don't get attached. Don't act like a hero. But now here I was. Walking down a road with my misfit band of warriors thinking I'd some how manage to save the girl from the motherfucking army. But it didn't matter to me. I was going to try anyway even if I knew I was going to fail because I had found something more important then surviving.

I had found something worth surviving for.


	21. The Road (II)

"Are we really doing this?" I heard a voice whisper behind me. It didn't matter who it was that said it this time, They had been whispering this question every couple minutes for the past hour. I haven't even bothered to give them a glare this time around.

Yes, we were fucking doing this.

I have been asking the same fucking question of myself as we marched down the only large road in this stupid fucking town. There was no guarantee they where hold up at the end of it. There base could be miles away and they had such a huge head start and they had a fucking convoy of vehicles they could be in fucking Columbus by now and I would be walking towards nothing, for no reason.

But it didn't fucking matter because I had to try. I couldn't walk away from this. Not without trying.

And part of me knew that I wasn't going to stop until I found her. Not even if she was in fucking Alaska. I'd find a way.

I owed her at least that.

"She's safer with them, they have weapons, guns, we should leave her with them." Even twenty paces ahead of her I could still feel Mercedes eyes on me as she whispered gently to whomever was closest to her. I could feel the head creep up the back of my neck. Lucky for her, it was Puck that answered.

"She didn't want to go with them." Puck said.

I kept my eyes painted on the hedges that lined the side of the road. I didn't drive down this way very often. Further down the road was the stupid fucking high school that ruined my life for four whole years and I avoided that place as much as possible. But I knew further down the road was a small neighborhood. It wasn't anything like the neighborhood I lived in but it had one of those cheesy white signs that said something about pines or some stupid shit like that when you drove through the entrance. It was probably just some stupid fucking scam so the developers could charge another 100k for their shitty generic houses but convince the chumps that it was a world class neighborhood with some fucking standards.

Maybe that would make the city assholes feel better about moving out to bumblefuck, Ohio.

I remember driving through here once in high school during Halloween. we had toilet paper, a carton of eggs and knew the address of that bitch from gym class.

There's always some bitch from gym class.

I remember it being a small neighborhood. Maybe twenty houses before it hits a park and then a dead-end and if I remembered correctly it would be a while before they'd hit anything else. Maybe we'd hit he high school but I doubted there would be anything really useful there. I didn't want to stop but we had nothing, no water, no food, and the only weapons we had managed to grab was a a couple of combat knives that Quinn kept stored in her ridiculous camo pants with the 9 million pockets. Though I couldn't really make fun of her for them anymore, without them we'd have fucking nothing.

"There's a neighborhood coming up." I said.

From the corner of my eye I could see Quinn's eyes slide off the horizon to study me.

"It's small, perfect place to make a quick check for supplies." I said.

I finally turned to find a hint of a smile on Quinn's face.

I stopped walking and turned to face her. "What?"

"Oh." Her smile only grew. "You just sounded a lot like me there."

I scoffed. "Fucking wonderful." I turned down the road and passed the sign with the golden letters. There was a brown stain that looked a lot like blood covering the R in the 'Rustic Pines' sign. I stopped at the street corner and scanned the houses.

I could hear Quinn barking instructions to the rest of the group behind me.

The houses looked untouched. Besides the overgrown grass you would have thought everything was just fucking peachy in the Lima town limits. But I knew fucking better then to believe the quiet.

Quiet was more dangerous then the noise those things created. At least with noise you were on your guard. In silence people get comfortable, they get compliment and that's how people get fucking dead.

And I didn't have fucking time for people and their stupidity right now, I needed to get in and out.

"Okay you and Puck are going left." Quinn said as she came up beside me, she held out the two combat knives for me to choose from. One knife was all black with a rounded ribbed handle. It was larger then the other but had a smoother blade The other knife was smaller but had ridges on both sides. Designed to do more damage on the way out then on the way in. I grabbed the smaller knife and handed it to Puck who was coming up behind me.

"I'm going to take Finn and search the otherside." Quinn said.

"Lets make this quick." I told Puck as we split from the group.

I headed to the first house without looking back and felt Puck fall in line behind me. Even though the sound of his heavy breathing and the smell of his sweat still made my skin crawl, I couldn't deny the rhythmn we had developed working together. We moved in unison. I pull the door open, Puck jumped in searching the house with quick movements. I followed behind him and we moved as one from room to room.

It seemed like the family had taken off at the first sign of chaos. Maybe they were part of the first wave of idiots headed directly for th big cities an certain death. There was a chance we'd get lucky and find an abundance of supplies. The part of down was away from the highway, not towards it. There's no real reason for people to come this way. Unless they were held up somewhere nearby. We move quick as we cleared the bottom level on the modest house, a small living room, a small kitchen with a dinning room table in the corner and a closet of a fucking bathroom.

"Okay it's clear." Puck said as he undid his belt.

I jumped backwards. "What the actual fuck do you think-"

He let out a sign as I heard piss hit water.

I shook my head and headed to the front door where I signaled for the rest of the group to come search the bottom floors while Puck and I cleared the top floors. I could hear Rachel barreling her way through the kitchen cupboards excitingly filling a plastic bag as Puck and I made our way up the stairs.

"Well good news is if any walking corpse was up here it would be coming at her by now." He said with a smirk.

"Maybe we should just let it go by then." I said.

Puck let out a scoff of a laugh and turned right at the top of the stairs.

There had been a family of four that lived up here. A teenage girl and young boy judging by the blue spaceships that lined the walls of the smallest bed oom and the purple wall covered in posters of terrible boy bands in the second. The band's stupid smiling faces were already covered in a layer of dust. I wondered where they were when all this happened. We're they on tour in some large city, if so they were probably walking corpses or meatless bodies by now but maybe they were lucky to be home with family. Locked up in their mansions with the people they loved and struggling to survive like the rest of us.

Though I fucking doubt it. I don't really think singing and dancing on stage really taught survival skills that mattered today. This was the land for the Quinns, and the Pucks. Those used to taking care of themselves. Not someone used to having their laundry delivered and their expensive cars driven for them.

"You alright there?" Puck said.

"I was just wondering if-" I pointed towards the poster I had been studying.

"Oh, definitely." He said.

"Really?" I asked.

"Absolutely." He said. "I mean totally gay, just look at the hair."

He turned and walked back into the hallway.

"Wait-" I looked back at the poster. "Really?"

He was already standing at the last room we had to clear. If I had to guess this had to be the master bedroom. I reached for the door and pushed it open.

The smell of death hit me like a sucker punch as Puck jumped into the room. He instantly covered his mouth but it couldn't stop the coughing gags that left him. Now matter how many times you smell or see it, you just can never get used to it.

The entire family laid sprayed out across the large bed. Mother and Father sandwiched two smaller bodies. I could still see patches of pajama fabric clinging to their decaying bodies. There was brown stains at the top of each of their pillows. Everyone but the father had bullet holes in the side of their head. The male corpse had a blood stain above his head, blood had splattered against the headboard. The hand holding the 9MM pistol hung over the side of the bed.

He had killed his entire family and then put the gun in his mouth.

I could hear crunching as Puck tried to pry the pistol from the rigid bones. I turned my head away and looked around. There was a small Television in the corner. There was a pile of DVDs on top of the TV. I picked up the copy of 'Toy Story' that was on top of the pile.

There was a clicking sound. I turned to see Puck releasing the clip and checking its contents.

"Looks like the magazine was full when he-" He pushed the magazine back into place. The words he left unsaid held heavy in the air.

I put the movie back down on the pile and maneuvered around a large orange bowl on the ground. It had what looked like popcorn kernels lining the bottom.

"Looks like they had a family movie night before..." He picked up the 'Toy Story' copy I had just placed back on the pile.

"Lets just-" I began searching the drawers. "Lets just find whatever we can fucking take and get the fuck out of this room."

The second drawer had a small flashlight. I tested the batteries and put it into my back pocket. I couldn't stomach it anymore and left the rest of the search to Puck.

I stepped out the front door to get some fresh air into my lungs. I looked across to see Mercedes comforting Finn. He was using the mailbox to steady himself as he released the contents of his stomach onto the street in front of the house him and Quinn were supposed to search.

I crossed the street, ignoring the puking giant and strolled up the driveway where I found Quinn leaning against the door, watching Finn. She looked almost bored.

"They walk and its fine, but he finds a family laying harmlessly in a bed and this happens." She gestured to the scene at the mailbox.

I followed her hand to see Mercedes rubbing his back and whispering comfortingly in his ear. Rachel has just caught sight of the scene and dropped her haul on the front lawn as she sprinted across the lawn to comfort him.

"Your family take the ease route too?" Quinn asked almost casually. She gestured with a empty orange pill bottle I just noticed she was holding in her hand.

I nodded. "With a 9MM."

Something finally peaked her interest. She stood up straight and turned to face me. "Ammo?"

"Puck thinks the mag was full before it was used. He's searching the rest of the house now." I said.

"Excellent." Quinn said. "Maybe we'll luck out and he'll turn out to be some sort of hunting enthusiast."

For some reason the scene made me feel anything but luck, the hair stood up on the back of my neck.

"Do you think-" I looked down the rest of the short block.

"We're going to find similar scenes in the rest of the houses." She said. "It's going to be a long day. Help me clear the rest of this house so we can get the show on the road. We've lucked out with the one pistol. Maybe we'll hit the fucking jackpot and find the house of the president of the NRA." I followed Quinn up the stairs. "Or at least the fucking Janitor."

Other houses used poison and died holding hands in their living room. Another family was found hanging by their necks in the basement. But they had only found one more family that used a gun, a revolver that had been used by a family of three and there was no other ammo in the house. In the end we managed to scrounge up haul was a few backpacks full of water and canned goods, one revolved with there bullets left in the chamber, one pistol with 12 rounds left in the magazine and another 50 9mm bullets found in the first house. They had a couple of butcher knives, an axe, a machete found in the garage of some weekend warrior, one of those nifty little hydration packs from the same outdoorsy guy, and I was particularly happy with the large camping knife I found tucked away in a box in the garage. It even had a sheath I could strap to my belt so it was always handy.

Quinn smirked when I walked up with the large knife protruding from my belt. She put her hand on her hip to proudly display her combat knife hanging from its black sheaf on her left side.

"Twinsies." Puck mocked as he fastened the axe he had been carrying to the backpack he had just found in with the camping gear.

I ignored him. "Okay we found all we could fucking find. We need to get going."

Quinn opened her mouth to respond but it was Rachel who spoke first. "We should rest here."

I didn't even bother looking at her. "We don't have the time, we have to catch-"

"There's no way we're going to catch up to them, they have vehicles and they have endless supplies. And how do we even know they came this way?!" Rachel challenged

I turned to face her. I felt the heat rise up my neck. I took a few steps forward before Quinn stepped in to stop me before I ripped Rachel's head clear from her stupid little neck.

"She has a point." Quinn said.

I stopped. That wasn't what I was expecting to hear from Quinn.

"It's going to get dark." She studied me for a second. "Even if we make it through a night travelling in the pitch black, we could walk right by their strong hold and not even know it. It's safer to travel in the daylight."

"We could use some of this camping gear tonight. Make a warm meal." She pulled a folded pile of paper from her pocket. "And figure out where those fuckers are held up." She tossed me the paper.

The map landed face up in my hands.

* * *

><p>The yellow flames of the lantern danced off the walls of the small room. We had the map spread out among the kitchen table. Quinn has marked out our location with a red dot from a scented marker she found upstairs in a child's toy room.<p>

"We know they're probably still in town." Quinn held the end of the marker to the edge of her lips as she thought aloud.

"Does your dad always take a large convoy out for a Sunday drive through town?" I asked.

"A commander never travels with less then twenty guns." Quinn said with her best impression of a gruffled voice. It did sound strangely like her father. "If they were traveling any distance you would have seen a water truck or at least a supply truck. It was just Hummers and small vehicles. Enough to carry a day or two worth of supplies for each man but he'd never travel that far without a large supply truck. And yes he would take that many cars on a Sunday drive through town."

"So what you're saying is that they could be stationed just down the road for all we know." I said.

The strong smell of chili entered the room as Puck entered balancing three bowls in his hand. He dropped one in front of Quinn before he handed me the second. The spoons clanged against the wood as he dropped them onto the table. I let the steam of the warm food fill my face. I had to savor this. After we left tomorrow morning, I didn't know when my next hot meal would come.

"What did I miss?" Puck managed to get out with his mouth full.

"Quinn thinks they're stationed somewhere in town." I said before taking my own bite.

"McKinley?" He asked.

"McKinley High School." I said when I saw the confused looked on Quinn's face. "It's just down the road from here."

I traced my finger a few miles down the road to a large structure on the map. She followed my fingers.

"Too small." She said. "And I know my dad would want to hold something of value."

"That wonderful public establishment isn't of value?" Puck said with mock offense.

Quinn ignored him. Her fingers traced the road further down. I watched as her hands landed on several structures on the map before she shook her head to herself and kept tracing. She stopped five minutes later, her fingers traced 'Lima Memorial Hospital'.

My heart jumped into my throat.

"You think he's at the hospital?" Puck asked.

"It's large, defensible, a necessity if he wants to-."

"Guys." Rachel was poking her head through the door.

"Not right now." I said waving Rachel off and looking back down at the map. If the army was holding down the hospital, my father could still be there,

"But Finn told me to tell you that he saw headlights in the street." Rachel said yanking me from my thoughts.

Quinn was instantly on her feet. "Tell everyone to turn off all lights." She pushed through the door and marched up the stairs to Finn's location overlooking the entrance of the neighborhood. I followed her.

She looked over Finn's shoulder from the boarded up windows. There we saw two headlights making their way slowly down the road. A spotlight was being shinned on the houses one by one. I could see the light shinning on doors we had left open during our search and abandoned supplies strewn across overgrown lawns. We had been slopping in our searchers and now I was cursing under my breath. If they were at all familar with this neighborhood then they knew someone was here.

"Of course they're be looking for supplies on the same night we searched it." Finn whispered. "That's just our luck."

"They aren't looking for supplies." Quinn said just as the search light fell upon the front door of our house and the light climbed up to our windows. We fell to the ground but it didn't matter much. I knew Quinn was right.

"They're looking for us." She said.

I heard a chorus of car doors slam.


	22. The Road (III)

"Finn, I want you and Puck to grab everyone and bring them down to the basement." Quinn said.

She held out the revolver to him. Finn took it with a shaking hand. "Shoot any fucker that comes down those stairs." Finn stared at her with wide eyes. She gave him a reassuring nod and practically pushed him down the stairs.

I heard his stomps echo through the empty house. I shook my head.

"Not much for stealth is he?" I said to Quinn.

I heard a scoff as she turned her attention back towards the window. She lifted her head up for a quick glance.

"It's a civilian vehicle." She whispered as she lowered herself back down.

"How many?" I asked.

"It's a small vehicle, they can't have more then four, five?" Quinn said.

She pulled the 9-MM from her waistband and checked the chamber. I put my hand over the gun. "We might have enough bullets to handle these guys, but what happens if we attract something. And we definetly don't have enough ammo to last if they have weapons and we get into a shootout."

"We have to surprise them." Quinn whispered.

I heard a panicked rush of feet echoing around the kitchen, Finn and Puck must have been rushing the group into the basement.

"How the fuck are we going to surprise them?" I said. "They seem to know exactly where we are."

"Do you think they've been watching us?" She turned her head quickly towards me. I could't believe the army brat hadn't seemed to have thought about that. We stared at each other in silence for a few moments before the sound of footsteps echoed through the house.

"Front door entrance." Quinn said almost with a scoff.

I'm sure it wasn't typical army procedure to clear a house by entering the front door. It seemed like the most obvious route to take. It made me feel a little better, these amateurs weren't military. It meant that we had a chance to take them out and make it through this.

Quinn turned her ear towards the source of the noise as the footsteps progressed slowly through the house. She held up one finger to indicate that it was just one person.

I pulled the camping knife from its sheath on my belt. The top floor was small with only one entrance, a set of stairs in the front of the house, we were in what seems to be a children's den or play room. The play room was positioned directly over the foyer, facing the stairwell. We could easily hear the footsteps as they progressed deeper into the house and away from us. The stairs to the basement were next to the kitchen and our visitor was getting closer and closer to them with every step as if he was heading directly for them. As if he had seen them run into the basement, heading to them first meant that Quinn, and her almost full clip of bullets, could sneak up behind him.

I listened closely to the echoing of the first steps. It sounded like only one guy was down there searching the house. I couldn't hear the rest of them. If there really was a group of them why just send in one guy.

"Where are the others?" Quinn said. It was as if she had read my mind.

We listened to the footsteps as they hallowed out against the tile of the kitchen. I looked over to Quinn for some sort of a plan but even in the darkness I could see she was coming up empty. She still had nothing. They probably had the rest of the group hidden somewhere, waiting for us to make the first move. We had to draw them out some how.

The footsteps stopped for a second. The visitor made a quick stride across the length of the kitchen and then I heard the distinct sound of a squeaking door hinge.

He was going to start checking the basement.

I stood up. Quinn reached up to pull me back down but I pulled away from her and sprinted across the hallway to the other side of the house. With each step my feet pounded against the carpeted hallway floor. The door hinges creaked again and the basement door slammed shut. The visitor began retracing his steps towards the front of the house. Boots on tile, on wood and then I heard the stairs creak as the first bit of weight hit them.

I couldn't see the visitor but I could see Quinn's shape across from me in the darkness. She was crouched, her gun trained on the stairwell. There was another creak as the visitor made his way slowly up the stairs. I looked back up at Quinn. I could see her dark shadow cast on the wall behind her, then the shadow moved. I opened my mouth to warn her but before any sound could escape my lips there was a cold metal barrel pressed against the back of my the back of my head.

"Drop it." A voice whispered. The barrel was jammed hard against my head.

I looked up at Quinn. The shadow was standing just over her now, Quinn's hands were raised just above her shoulders and her handgun was handing loosely from her finger. The shadow reached around to grab it from her.

I loosened my fingers around my knife, it fell to the carpet with a loud thud.

"Where are the others?" The voice behind me hissed. A hand reached out for the knife next to me on the carpet. I followed it's progression all the way back to the pocket of his cargo pants.

"Face forward." He hissed. The barrel jabbed hard against my head. "Do you make a habit of robbing graves?"

"What the fuck are you talking about?" I turned to face him but all that earned me was another rough jab.

The back of my head was beginning to throb.

I looked over a Quinn, she was being thrown to the ground and I could see her hands being yanked behind her back, the shadow pulled a piece of rope from a pocket. I really hoped she had some sort of plan right now because we seemed pretty fucked.

Fingers were digging into the back of my neck and forcing me towards the ground. The rough fibers of the carpet dug into my face. He worked quickly to tie the ropes behind my back and the thought that he had done this before crept into the back of my mind.

I was yanked to my feet only to be thrown back down against the wall in the hallway. Quinn landed with a thud next to me. Now I heard the footsteps of others in the house. The moved quickly from room to room.

Now that he stood in front of me I saw how massive this guy really was. Tall and large, he was built like a football player and he probably had been one back in his glory days of high school. He was dressed in all black, Quinn was right they weren't army, they all had a mismatch of clothing as if they had just grabbed any dark clothing they had in their closet, hoodies, jeans, cargo pants, but no camo.

"Where are the other grave robbers?" The large guy said. He took a step forward, his fist tightened around the automatic weapon in his hand.

"There are no others." I responded. I saw stars. Something metal had slapped against my cheekbone. Blood filled my mouth.

"What the fuck, David?!" The shadow that had grabbed Quinn was much smaller then the man that had just struck me. The smaller man grabbed David with two hands and yanked him into the room Quinn had been hiding in. I spit a dark patch of what had to be blood onto the beige carpet of the hallway. I could hear the heavy whispers of a heated conversation but I couldn't make out what they were saying.

"They know you're lying." Quinn said casually. Her eyes didn't leave the duo.

I adjusted my jaw slowly feeling the pain as it cracked with movement. "Yeah I gathered that."

"You were right, they've been watching us." Quinn said.

We turned our attention to a pair of boots that had just made their way to the top of the stairs. This body was about the same size as David the football player, but this visitor was a little bit shorter. The person was also build similarly to David and wearing all black like the rest of them. The boots stopped in front of me. A flashlight illuminated the dark red patch I had just spit onto the carpet. The body lowered into a crouch in front of me, a hand reached out to touch me. I flinched away from the touch.

It didn't help, a hand gripped my face anyway. They felt strong, yet somehow soft. A light blinded my eyes as the hand gently moved my face to inspect the damage. It took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to the light of the flashlight but once it did I was shocked to be looking back into the face of the woman.

"Cap." David was now standing behind the woman inspecting my face.

The ran her hands roughly over the side of my face. I winced from the pain of the touch and she was instantly on her feet and facing David. "Why did you hit her?" She spoke with a commanding voice.

He easily had a foot on this woman but she stood her ground against him.

"She's lying." David said. "She said nobody else was with her."

"We do NOT strike prisoners." The woman took a step forward and David stepped backwards his body seeming to shrink back with every word. "Do you understand me?"

I glanced over to Quinn to see her give a satisfied smirk. I looked up to see David nodding like a scolded child. The woman pushed him over towards the stairs. "Go, join Sugar and Azimio downstairs. We don't have time for this type of stuff."

He froze for a second at the top of the stairs and I could feel his eyes on me even in the dark.

"Go!" She commanded and he was down the stairs in and instant, the stairs creaking loudly under his weight.

"Blaine." She called. She knelt down beside me again and this time the smaller man was kneeling down beside her, his M16 rattling against his hip. "She's going to have a nasty welt from that." She lifted my face again with her hand and shined her flashlight on it to show the mark.

Blaine let out a low whistle between his teeth.

"Make sure she gets an ice pack as soon as we get back." She said.

I pulled my face from her grasping, ignoring the pain that shot through my cheek. "We aren't going anywhere with you fuckers."

The woman just smiled. "I don't really think you're in any position to negotiate. We can chat about it back at base but right now I'd like-"

Three quick shots rang out through the house.

The woman and Blaine looked at each other quickly before Blaine leapt to his feet and headed down the stairs.

There was a chorus of voices and shouting. Finn had fired his only three bullets from his revolver but from the sounds of things it didn't seem like any of those bullets had found their mark.

_Fuck._

"Looks like we found the others." The woman said. I could hear the sounds of a muffled shouts coming from the basement. Ten minutes later Blaine came back up the stairs.

"Five more in the basement." He said between breaths. "They had the Wilton's revolver, but the shooter wasn't even close, no injuries."

"Excellent. That's all of them. Go get the bus." She said. Blaine nodded before he headed back down the stairs.

We sat in silence for a while. I listened to the grunts coming from the basement. I didn't doubt that it was coming from Puck. I'm sure he was putting up a quite a fight.

"I'm really sorry about that incident with David." The woman said. She was leaning up against the bannister, watching me intently. "We try to keep respect for the deceased community members here and it just so happens that this is David's Uncle's house. They were very close."

"So are you going to take us to jail?" Quinn said. I could hear the mocking tone in her voice and by the smile in the woman's voice I could tell that she heard it too.

She studied Quinn for a moment.

"The time for prisons, trials and jails has long passed. The stuff you have to do to stay alive today..." She trailed off and looked around the room. "Well lets just say it's stuff that wouldn't have been allowed before-" She gestured around her. "all this happened."

"I'm more the brawn of the operation here." She continued. "We have some brains back at base and I feel like he'd like to have a chat with you."

"And what if we refuse to go back to this base of yours?" I said.

"I don't really think you're really in a situation to negotiate right now." She said. She stood back up and paced around the top of the stairs.

I looked over at Quinn, she shrugged before she settled herself against the wall. It looked like we were going for a ride.

It was a couple of minutes before voice called up the stairs. "Captain Beiste!"

There was a pounding of footsteps. It was a small woman, dressed in all black minus a bizarre looking zebra print scarf draped fashionably across her neck. Her leather boots had a thick three inch heel and she was wearing bright red lipstick that seemed to glow every time a light hit her face. I glanced over at Quinn who was eyeing the newest member of the group with something mixed between utter horror and bemusement.

"Sugar." The Captain responded.

"There's a group of those...things...approaching from 5-" Sugar turned her body to face the front of the house and held up her arm up and then a couple of inches to the right. "No 4-wait 3? I forget my clocks but there's a group coming. Blaine told me to tell you that he thinks they were attracted by the gunshots."

The woman who I now assumed to be known as Captain Beiste cursed under her breath. She glared over at Quinn and myself. "So much for leaving this resting place undisturbed." She turned her attention back to the well-dressed young woman. "The bus?" She asked.

"Parked outside. We're loading in the five we captured in the basement now. The one with the tacky haircut is being particularly...feisty." The young woman said.

"Tell the boys to knock them out and drag them if they have to, we can't waste any more time. I'll bring down these two." Captain Beiste said.

Sugar nodded and ran down the stairs, her heels clicking on the wood.

Captain Beiste pulled me roughly to my feet. It took a second to steady myself with my hands still tied tightly behind my back.

"Some group of misfit soldiers you got here, Cap." Quinn said. She was pulled to her feet with a grunt. Captain Beiste smirked as she grabbed as both by the arm and pulled us down the stairs.

"These are some of the best girls and guys I got." She said. "It's been slim pickings."

As soon as we stepped outside the doors of what had been our sanctuary for the night, it was pure and utter chaos. The large man, David, was trying to pull a kicking and screaming Puck up the stairs of a large yellow bus. Another larger man was trying to grab his feet but Puck had just kicked him hard in the face and he was sent rearing back covering his nose.

In the distance, near the entrance of the neighborhood, I could see a dark wave of bodies. I could barely make out the shapes in the darkness but the groans and the smell were unmistakeable.

_Fuck._

"We have 5 maybe 10 minutes before they're on us." Captain Beiste said. She pulled us towards the bus. "You better get your friend to cooperate."

She was right. We just needed to get the fuck out of here and they were the only one's with a ride. We had to go with them, at least for now.

"Puck." I yelled. He froze and looked at me. Even the guys trying to pull him up stopped to look at me. "Chill the fuck out."

It worked long enough to give the guys time to grab Puck and pull him up the steps, they shoved him roughly into the seat in front of a sobbing Rachel. Captain Beiste looked at me with a pleased smile on her face.

Someone rushed past us carrying a backpack with an axe strapped to it. "Are we all loaded up?" Captain Beiste asked.

Sugar stopped in her tracks, her white patterned scarf sticking out in the moonlight. "This is the last of their supplies." Sugar said.

The Captain nodded towards a beat up black sedan parked behind the bus. "Ride with Blaine, The rest of us will take the Bus." She said.

Sugar was already heading towards the passenger door of the sedan before we were yanked towards the yellow school bus. 'McKinley High School' was painted in bold black letters on the side. I let out a quick laugh. Second to the end of the world getting on this bus was one of my worst nightmares.

The hungry moaning grew louder as Captain Beiste threw us up the stairs.

She dropped Quinn and myself in the first row of seats and sat down across from us. "Straight through." She commanded to David who had sat down at the wheel and started the engine.

"Are you sure?" He asked, glancing back over his shoulder. "Will was kind of pissed off last time I did that. He said that's how I fucked up the engine of the minivan."

The horde was now 20 feet away and gaining fast. We were running out of time.

"Does this look like a minivan?" Captain Beiste couldn't help the urgency in her voice.

David shook his head. "No, ma'am."

The bus grumbled to life and headed straight to the heart of the horde. There was the crushing sound of bones and flesh under the tires. I closed my eyes and tried to block out the memory of Brittany's dad and the screaming that escaped his mouth as teeth dug into the flesh of his arm. The smell of burning flesh under the cruiser tires.

Quinn nudged me. "We're fine." She said.

I opened my eyes to see open road ahead of us.

"It was a small horde." She said. I could hear the smile in her voice. "They didn't stand a chance."

Captain Beiste was watching us from her seat. "This bus takes a lot of work to keep running but its times like this that make it all worth it."

"Damn right it does." David said. He yanked the wheel for a wide turn and I felt myself slam against the bus window.

"Easy on those turns, Karofsky." Captain Beiste said.

"Yes, ma'am." David responded.

"So-" Quinn said. She glanced out the window looking for something in the light of the Bus's headlights. "We are we headed?"

David let out a laugh. "Just the worst place in this shithole of a world."

Captain Beiste shook her head at his response. "We're headed back to High School."


	23. The Road (IV)

I ran my hands over the cold steel for what had to be the hundredth time. I felt around the edges of the steel bars for any weaknesses in the small window bars. There had to be some escape from this shithole. I just wasn't looking hard enough. I didn't understand how Puck and Quinn could just be laying there. We were locked in some fucking makeshift prison cell in the basement of a fucking school, my face was fucking on fire and that stupid ice pack they gave me was useless and Brittany was still out there. She could be half way across the country by now and Puck and Quinn were just fucking laying there!

For fuck's sake!

I gave the bars another push. They didn't budge an inch. There had to be something fucked up in this room. It wasn't build to hold people hostage. I pushed at the bars again frustration.

"We're going to speak to the leader dude in the morning." Puck grumbled from his cot on concrete floor. "Can't you just wait until then."

"No, I can't fucking wait!" I slammed the bars one last time. My arms and body were starting to feel weak. "We were supposed to take off at first light but now we're stuck here for god knows how long. And Brittany is still fucking out there."

"And what do you suggest we do?" Quinn said.

"Well, how about getting off your asses and helping me for one." I said.

I could hear a frustrated grumble coming from Puck's direction on the floor. If I wasn't so fucking tired I'd walk over there and kick him right in the ribs.

Just because.

"Think about it, Santana." I could hear a ruffle of sound that I assumed was Quinn sitting up from her own spot on the floor as she continued. "Even if we do find a way out AND break out the rest of the group, where do we go from there? We have no weapons-"

"We can fucking find weapons-" I said.

"We have no vehicles." Quinn said.

"We fucking steal something-" I said.

I could hear air escaping from Quinn's lungs as she rose to her feet. I heard her footsteps echo around the concrete walls. I felt her drawing closer to me and I felt my entire body go on edge as I took a step back. I felt the cold concrete against my back.

"No matter what we found, we are still out-manned, out-powered and out-gunned." She said. I felt her hands touch my shoulder.

I shoved her backwards, the push must have taken her by surprised because I heard her back hit the concrete with a loud thump.

"We are always going to be out-manned!" I said.

My voice echoed off the walls of the room and probably carried out into the night but I didn't fucking care. "Have you not fucking looked outside? There are millions- no - fuck that there's probably billions of those dead things walking around out there. And they don't give a fuck about anything. We saw them around the mall, always roaming, looking for the next stupid fuck to wander off so they can rip him to pieces. And eventually we're all going to be that next stupid fuck. We all know it. We can't keep on like this for fucking ever but we had something going at that mall. We had something and we fucked it up and it got stolen from us."

I could feel the wetness around my eyes and I knew they could hear the cracking in my voice but I couldn't stop it.

"Santana." Quinn started pushing herself up to her feet. She rushed over to me.

"I fucked it up." I said. I felt my body pulling into itself.

I didn't know I was falling until I felt Quinn's arms around me, guiding me gently to the cold concrete. I tried to push away from her but my legs felt like jelly.

"We could have had something. At the mall. We could have-"

Quinn shushed me. She rocked me back and forth and for some reason it soothed me. I didn't realize how tired I really was until my eyes started closing on me.

There was the clatter of metal against metal.

"Santana." Someone shook me.

I pulled my eyes open only to see the blinding sunlight pouring in through our tiny window. I heard the steel door scrape along the concrete as it thrust open. I was instantly on my feet, face to face with David. He eyed me, probably enjoying his own fucking handiwork. I hadn't seen myself in a mirror since he had hit me but I could fucking feel it. I knew he had to have left a mark and by the look on David and Blaine's face it had to be a nasty one.

Blaine pulled his eyes off of my face and turned his attention to Quinn.

"Will would like to speak to you now." Blaine said. He gestured for Quinn to come with him before I stepped forward. It was David who grabbed me. I pushed him hard in the chest with both hands but he didn't even budge.

"She comes with me." Quinn said over David and my struggles.

"Commander Schue asked for one." Blaine responded.

David slammed me hard against the wall. I felt the air leave my lungs.

"Is that really fucking necessary?!" I heard Puck step forward, Blaine raised his gun.

Quinn remained calm, she held one hand up to stop Puck from taking another step.

"Is Captain Beiste going to be at this meeting?" Quinn asked.

Blaine keep his gun trained on Puck but offered her a sideways glance. "Yes." He said slowly.

"Then I should be able to bring another leader with me as well." Quinn said.

There were a few moments of heavy silence. Blaine lowered his gun and nodded towards David. He released me and stepped back towards the entrance.

I wiped the imaginary dust from my pants, its not like any dust would have done any damage, I was already covered in grime and dirt a long time ago.

"Normally I would agree but-" Blaine and David exchanged a glance. "She's rather volatile."

Quinn smirked. "You guys have a sort of dual leadership thing going on here, correct?"

Blaine nodded.

"We have a similar set up." She said. Quinn gestured between her and myself. Blaine and I locked eyes and I wasn't sure if I was more confused or if Blaine was.

Finally Blaine just shrugged and led Quinn and me out the door.

David walked in back, Blaine in front, their automatic weapons head casually at their side as we made our way around the maze of the basement. I saw other staff with guns standing outside other heavy doors and I wondered for a second if that's where the rest of the group was being held.

"These are some real nice quarters you have here." Quinn said as they approached a set of metal stairs. Blaine's boot hit the first rung of stairs with a loud echo.

"Those are the guest quarters." Blaine said over the echo of their footsteps.

"If this is how you treat your guests I don't want to know how you treat your prisoners." Quinn said.

Blaine froze at the top of the stairs and eyed Quinn intently.

"We have a protocol for strangers now." Blaine said. "We've-" He looked away for a second. "We've been burned pretty badly before." He continued up the stairs and pushed open a large metal door. "We rather be safe then sorry." He held the door open for us.

"I'm sorry the rooms aren't very comfortable." He said. He nodded at a couple of people that walked by. They were unarmed, carrying a brown sack full of clothes. They glared at me as they passed by. They didn't seem to take too kindly to outsiders, I saw that already.

"We're a little limited on comfort supplies." He said. He turned right down hallway. "You're lucky you had anything to sleep on honestly."

As we passed further down the hallway I saw several rooms that looked to be adminstrative offices, people were hunched over desks and they looked to be going over a plan or a map in another room. Any other circumstance maybe I would have fucking laughed.

"You've got to be fucking kidding me." I said.

The smile that escaped Blaine's lips was the first sincere one I had seen since we met him in the darkness of that house. It almost seems like he was on the verge of laughter.

"Will used to teach here." Blaine paused with his hand over the door. His fingers covering a metal plaque that spelled out 'Principal's Office'. "He said he always wanted to sit at this desk."

With that Blaine pushed open the door. Seated at the desk was a small man, this had to be their fearless leader, Commander Schue. He had curly brown hair that seemed to form some sort of white boy afro on his head. He was dressed in a dark green dress shirt and tie. I understood what Captain Beiste had said about him staying back at the base, this man didn't look like he'd last a second out there.

Captain Beiste herself was standing to the Will's right. They seemed to be talking when Blaine opened the door but she quickly straightened herself up and turned to face the group as the entered. Blaine and David stepped into the room, closing the door quickly behind them. They fanned out to the left and the right and stood back against the wall, facing the rest of the group. Will gave Blaine a thankful nod before his attention turned back towards Quinn and I.

He adjusted his tie before he spoke. "Your group caused quite a mess for us in the Pines."

I felt my frustration boiling. We were wasting time standing here with this stupid fucking pleasantries.

From the corner of my eye I could see Quinn open her mouth to speak but Will spoke again.

"A lot of us have family over there." He eyed David as he spoke, he eyes ran over my face, I didn't doubt that he knew where the marks had come from. "We hoped to keep those- things - out of there. We thought keeping our community away, respecting it as a sort of graveyard would leave the bodies of our loved ones undisturbed."

He rose to his feet. He was wearing a pair of worn dress pants and what looked to be brand new dress shoes, they squeaked on the tile as he walked around the desk, holding his tie as he rounded the corner and stopped to stand in front of Quinn and myself.

I shifted my weight on my feet, my patience was waning, this was such a waste of fucking time. Did he just want an 'I'm sorry' so we could go on with our fucking lives?

"And it worked until now." He said. "You stole their personal property, pillaged through their drawers and family heirlooms, my group found family photos tossed into the street-"

"It's not like they fucking need them anymore." I blurted out.

There was the chaos of movement behind me. I turned to see Blaine holding back David, there was a vein popping out of his neck, he was spitting obscenities at me and he was about to break through Blaine. I eyed the scene curiously, it didn't seem like Blaine was going to hold him back for very long, he was already pushing the smaller man backwards his hand inches away from grabbing the fabric of my shirt. Quinn arms wrapped around my shoulders and she yanked me backwards and away from his outstretched hand.

Captain Beiste was brushing past us, she was pushing David back towards the back wall and commanding him to leave over his yelling.

"What the fuck are you thinking?" Quinn said it just loud enough for me to hear.

I opened my mouth to respond but I didn't have anything to say or maybe it was I had to many things to say. I'm thinking this is a waste of my time. I'm thinking that Brittany could be in California by now, or Mexico, or Canada. Or I'm thinking that she could be dead, or fucking tortured or -. But nothing came out. I just watched the scene unfold around me. Captain Beiste with some help from Blaine was forcing a still furious and yelling David out the front door. It took a couple of rough shoves before he was finally gone. Silence filled the room once he was out in the hallway.

We were left alone with just Will. He ran his hand over his well trimmed beard for a few moments before he spoke.

"It's an honest mistake." He said. He rubbed his beard one more time before turned to face me and Quinn. "We aren't happy about it, obviously. But I know that we should have put up some sort of sign, we just didn't expect outsiders besides the convoys but-"

"Convoys?!" I stepped forward. "You've seen the convoys drive past here?"

Will eyed me.

Quinn stepped around me and spoke to Will herself. "They took our friend." Quinn said. "We've been following them."

Will seemed more willing to talk to Quinn. "I'm sorry to hear that." He rounded his desk and sat back down at his chair. "You're far behind them. They past by here yesterday morning. They've for sure reached the hospital by now. I don't think you'll be able to get your friend out from there. They have quite a force there."

I felt my heart jump into my throat. I couldn't hear anything he said after he said Brittany was probably at the hospital. As long as she was close I would be able to get to her.

"The hospital is still running?" Quinn said.

"It's not open to the public if that's what you're asking." Will said. "They won't let you within five hundred feet of the place. The army has locked it up tight."

"What use does the army have in the hospital?" Quinn asked.

"Apart from the obvious, I've heard some...interesting... rumors about what's going on over there." Will said. "I've heard that they're looking for a cure. Others have said that they've been running experiments on the dead. Some have said in the beginning of the fall they've witnessed the convoys capturing those things and throwing them into the back of a truck."

Quinn eyed me for a second before she looked back at Will. "Have they taken people before?"

Will nodded his head. "It hasn't happened often. But when they take someone they never come out of that place again. We've lost a some of our people through them. They're forces are just so strong, their numbers are so great that they just drove right up our driveway and took whomever they wanted and went their merry way. There was nothing we could have done about it. It would have been a bloodbath. We can't take them on."

"Even if you took them by surprise?" Quinn said.

Will's eyes opened wide.

"What about your people, don't you want to rescue them?" Quinn said.

Will swallowed hard. "We don't have the resources to take on the United States Army."

"Will, with all do respect the United States doesn't exist any more. Right now that's a group of men kidnapping people off the streets to use as science experiments. They should be stopped." Quinn said.

I felt my hands ball into a fist at the thought of Brittany tied up in a lab somewhere.

Will considered her proposition.

I wondered if Will knew the true weight of Quinn's words. If he knew that she was practically declaring war against her own father, maybe her words would hold more weight to him.

"You seem to have a good military head on your shoulders. I think you and your- friend here should do a little recon mission and see what you are truly asking me to do." He said. "If you come back with a non-insane plan to save those people I will bring it to the men. But if its crazy and useless I won't even bother and I will give you some supplies and send you on your way."


End file.
